SELFISH bickering among offspring is the bane of many a parent. Mongoose pups, however, seem to know the value of teamwork: they cooperate when begging for food, getting more as a result.
Matt Bell of the University of Cambridge spent three years in Uganda observing the behaviour of the banded mongoose, Mungos mungo. These small, ferret-like carnivores live in groups of roughly 50, and females generally give birth at the same time. Pups set up a loud chorus of chirps when they want to be fed, and Bell found that if one stops begging, all of the youngsters in the group receive less food.
Traditionally, biologists have stressed the idea that rival offspring use begging to compete for attention from their parents. Bell believes that his study will motivate researchers to take a closer look at whether these newborns might in fact be helping each other out.
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When mongoose pups leave the den, each one searches out an elder in the group 鈥� often a male 鈥� and follows this 鈥渆scort鈥� constantly for the next two months. Each pup begs for food, such as beetles, from its escort by chirping. Each escort feeds only its associated pup.
Bell was curious to know how one pup鈥檚 begging might influence the behaviour of the others in the same brood. So, for a day at a time he removed some of the pups from a group. The remaining pups had to beg harder to get food from their escorts. When Bell removed some of the escorts instead, the pups without escorts fell silent because they had no one to beg from, but the other pups made up for it by turning up the volume of their own begging calls by about 15 per cent (Current Biology, DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2007.03.015).
鈥淎 collective benefit has been generated by an entirely selfish behaviour 鈥� begging,鈥� says Bell. 鈥淓ach pup is acting in its own best interests, yet they can actually derive benefits from each other鈥檚 selfish behaviour.鈥�
