Release Summary
Primates scratch their skin or fur in a stressful situation (Figure 1). By using this self-scratching behaviour as a behavioural indicator of stress, our study on wild female Japanese macaques provided a novel and counter-intuitive finding: females exhibit higher stress levels when a closely related female is nearby. This pattern was found only during foraging but not resting, suggesting that food-related competition among relatives is a cause of their elevated stress. This unexpected finding provides new insight into the complex social dynamics of primates and their stress responses.
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