Family and Friends in Primate Development

Abstract

It is clear that regardless of the perspective one brings to the task, any overview of the primate order would reflect one quality that characterizes the great majority, although not all, of the species within it: Primate species have evolved essentially socialized forms of living. Group sizes may vary from a few to a hundred or more, but most members of our primate order spend most of the hours of most of the days during most of their lives together with others of their species. We are still at a primitive level of understanding the basis of evolutionary selection for sociality and of the factors influencing the fitness of primate groups as a whole and the individuals within them. But we cannot escape the conclusion that virtually all the functional activities that we observe in the primates (ourselves obviously included) must be shaped by the nature of the social environment within which the individual was reared and now functions. In many respects, this statement is obvious, but serves to remind us that the propensities and constraints which the young primate brings into the world as genetic baggage—while perhaps rarely dictating outcome—make certain forms of sensitivities and responses to external stimuli understandable only within a broad evolutionary, developmental, and contemporaneous social context.