Early life adversity has sex-dependent effects on survival across the lifespan in rhesus macaques.

Exposure to early life adversity is linked to detrimental fitness outcomes across taxa. Owing to the challenges of collecting longitudinal data, direct evidence for long-term fitness effects of early life adversity from long-lived species remains relatively scarce. Here, we test the effects of early life adversity on male and female longevity in a free-ranging population of rhesus macaques () on Cayo Santiago, Puerto Rico.

Early life adversity has sex-dependent effects on survival across the lifespan in rhesus macaques.

Exposure to adversity during early life is linked to lasting detrimental effects on evolutionary fitness across many taxa. However, due to the challenges of collecting longitudinal data, especially in species where one sex disperses, direct evidence from long-lived species remains relatively scarce. Here we test the effects of early life adversity on male and female longevity in a free-ranging population of rhesus macaques () at Cayo Santiago, Puerto Rico.

How do communicative cues shape the way that dogs (Canis familiaris) encode objects?

Our human capacity to efficiently learn from other individuals is unparalleled in any nonhuman species. Some scholars argue that our propensity to learn socially is supported by an early-emerging expectation that communicative cues will convey generic information (Csibra & Gergely, 2011). In the current 2 studies, we examine whether this expectation about generic information is unique to humans by testing a species that readily attends to human cues-dogs.

Macaque species with varying social tolerance show no differences in understanding what other agents perceive.

A growing body of work demonstrates that a species' socioecology can impact its cognitive abilities. Indeed, even closely related species with different socioecological pressures often show different patterns of cognitive performance on the same task. Here, we explore whether major differences in social tolerance in two closely related macaque species can impact a core sociocognitive ability, the capacity to recognize what others see.

One-to-one correspondence without language.

A logical rule important in counting and representing exact number is one-to-one correspondence, the understanding that two sets are equal if each item in one set corresponds to exactly one item in the second set. The role of this rule in children's development of counting remains unclear, possibly due to individual differences in the development of language. We report that non-human primates, which do not have language, have at least a partial understanding of this principle.

Do young rhesus macaques know what others see?: A comparative developmental perspective.

Humans undergo robust ontogenetic shifts in the theory of mind capabilities. Are these developmental changes unique to human development or are they shared with other closely related non-human species? To explore this issue, we tested the development of the theory of mind capacities in a population of 236 infant and juvenile rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta). Using a looking-time method, we examined what developing monkeys know about others' perceptions.

Rhesus monkeys show human-like changes in gaze following across the lifespan.

Gaze following, or co-orienting with others, is a foundational skill for human social behaviour. The emergence of this capacity scaffolds critical human-specific abilities such as theory of mind and language. Non-human primates also follow others' gaze, but less is known about how the cognitive mechanisms supporting this behaviour develop over the lifespan.