Give Me or Else: Power Dynamics in Food Sharing by Tamarin Monkey Breeding Pairs

This study examines the impact of social dominance in prosocial food giving tasks in conjunction with high and low value food rewards in tamarin (Saguinus Oedipus) dyads. Using a food-sharing task, dominant and subordinate tamarins were presented a bowl of food rewards, of either high or low value, for one minute with the remainder presented to his/her partner after the minute had passed. The study found that subordinate subjects used a social strategy, where they took more low value rewards than high value food rewards against their food preference, demonstrating the internalization of a power structure and the relinquishing of desired rewards in order for the peaceful maintenance of the social hierarchy. An interaction effect occurred, where dominant subjects were not interested in low value food rewards, and also took significantly less in general than subordinate subjects. Whereas dominant subjects were not concerned with the reward\u27s value outside of their preferences, subordinate subjects paid great attention to the preferences of the dominants, mirroring human studies. These results suggest that future primate research should use rewards of varying values in order to reflect the dominance interactions of primates on sharing. Implications for primate studies on prosocial sharing and reward selection, as well as for studies on human dominance and resource distribution, are discussed in the paper