A Rhesus monkey
Keeping a small circle of friends helps avoid unnecessary confusion and, if it’s a monkey, getting sick. A new study suggests that monkeys Rhesus Elderly people are less likely to contract illnesses when they are less sociable.
The new study, led by the universities of Exeter and Edinburgh, used long-term data on monkeys Rhesus on Cayo Santiago, known as Monkey Island, and discovered that being less sociable protects these animals from getting sick.
“Our findings suggest a powerful reason why many animals, including humans, may reduce their social connections as they age,” said Erin Siracusa, a scientist at the Center for Animal Behavior Research at the University of Exeter, in .
“Social bonds bring enormous benefits to a wide range of species, but sociality also brings costs, including risk of infectious diseases“, he added.
This study is one of the first to analyze how potential disease risk influences social aging from an evolutionary perspective.
“The cost-benefit ratio can change throughout individuals’ lives, which can generate changes in social behavior. Older individuals may be more susceptible to disease, but when we took this into account in our data, we found that older monkeys suffered lower costs of infection than younger people”, highlighted the researcher.
The benefits of social aging depended on the diseases that were spreading. In experiments, the scientists observed that social aging worked best when highly infectious diseases were being transmitted within the group, which would severely harm older monkeys.
The study also found that social aging may be a consequence of older monkeys take longer to recover of injuries.
This diminished healing ability can affect your socialization with other members, causing a drastic change in your social interactions with others.
The was published in Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.
