Primate hygiene battles parasites

What is it about?

Hygiene has evolved as a mechanism to avoid infectious disease and is universal among humans. While parasite-avoidance strategies like grooming, managing waste and avoiding other infected individuals are known to exist in other animals and reflect the foundation for hygienic behaviour, this remains an understudied area of behavioural ecology, especially in relation to risk-sensitivity during food acquisition. We used experiments and observation to show that hygienic tendencies involving food manipulation and faeces avoidance are associated with low parasite burdens in Japanese macaques. Our study shows that nonhuman primates, our closest relatives, display food-related hygienic tendencies which might reflect the precursors to related forms of human hygiene.

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