STAY-AT-HOME dads really do make a difference to the success of their offspring, at least among yellow baboons. Daughters, and some sons, who get help from their fathers enjoy a reproductive head start by maturing quicker, a new study suggests.
Baboons are not known for mild manners and gentle parenting, and males often move on to new groups. But it seems that males do help their young a lot. 鈥淪ometimes a male will even adopt an orphaned baby and carry it around for months,鈥� says Susan Alberts of Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.
Alberts and her colleagues tracked the time 42 male baboons spent in a social group and measured the age at which 118 of their children hit puberty. The longer dad stuck around, the sooner his daughters menstruated. Sons matured earlier too, but only if the father came high in the social pecking order. 鈥淢ale baboons are twice the size of females, so if boys but not girls have conflict with adult males, then maybe it takes high-ranking dads to protect sons,鈥� says Alberts.
Advertisement
The researchers think that sexual maturation speeds up because better food and reduced stress pave the way for earlier sex hormone activation.
Barbara Smuts at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, who has seen young baboons try to be near their fathers when foraging, agrees. This may make the young feel safer, allowing them to snatch food scraps or to dig out treats without being threatened by bullies. 鈥淧erhaps they learn over time that when they are in trouble, he鈥檒l be there,鈥� says Smuts.
Richard Seyfarth of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, who previously found lower stress hormone levels in female baboons with good male friends, also agrees: 鈥淪uch a sense of security could shift their hormonal balance in favour of earlier maturation.鈥�
So can human dads also expect precocious children? Actually, no. Because fathers are often still around when their children reach puberty, early maturation would add to the risk of incest and father-son competition. So a dad鈥檚 presence tends to delay sexual maturation in humans. Baboons don鈥檛 have this problem. 鈥淓ven the best dads tend to leave, or die, before their kids mature,鈥� says Alberts.
