Author | Bai Ze
It's summer vacation. Do students who are at home on holiday feel that their parents are getting more and more disgusted with you? I believe many students have heard this sentence from their parents: You were really cute when you were young, but you didn't expect to grow up … Yes …
Is it false that parents dote on themselves in childhood memories? Obviously, when I was a child, my parents were afraid of falling into their hands, but they were afraid of falling into their mouths. Why do they become less and less popular with their parents as they get older? Besides, I watched my parents pass the buck to each other. "So lazy, it must be with you!" "This Xiong Haizi is exactly the same as when you were a child!" . Watching the war at home escalate and get caught in the middle, you really want to go back to your childhood and return to that loving family …
Have mom and dad changed? Don't! You've changed! Because you're not a baby anymore!
Dr. Gong Neng and his team from the Center for Excellence in Innovation of Brain Science and Intelligent Technology (Institute of Neuroscience) of China Academy of Sciences (hereinafter referred to as the "Brain Intelligence Center") designed an experiment (related research paper was published online in Contemporary Biology on August 20th) and tested it with marmoset family as the object. The results show that the baby monkey can stimulate the rescue behavior of monkey parents, even monkey brothers and sisters, and even affect the brains of parents, so that they can rescue each other. With the increase of age, young monkeys gradually lost this "special function". At the monkey stage of adolescence, not only did parents stop saving, but they also stopped saving each other. What the hell is going on here? Why do families with baby monkeys have more love and family members help each other? We must start with marmosets.
Thumb-sized elf
Marmoset, a small monkey from the tropical rain forest in northeast Brazil, belongs to the marmoset family. The marmoset chosen by scientists in the Center for Brain and Intelligence has a cluster of white fluff like cotton on each ear, so it is called cotton-eared marmoset, also known as common marmoset. Marmosets are small and cute. The baby is as big as a human thumb. As an adult, it is only 20cm long and weighs only 300-400g g, so it is effortless to hold it in your hand.
Marmosets, like humans, are a few primates that practice monogamy. This couple, especially Marmosets' father, are very conscientious "dads". Moreover, marmosets, like humans, will do altruistic things. For marmosets who are not family members, they will share food with them without asking for anything in return. Because its social behavior and cognition are close to those of human beings, marmosets have always been an important helper for biologists to study human social behavior.
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Mother marmoset will give birth to baby marmoset 4-5 months after pregnancy, and the probability of giving birth to twins is as high as 80%, and sometimes triplets. Marmosets can live independently from their families when they are about one and a half years old. Before that, they lived with their parents, brothers and sisters. A marmoset family can have 3- 15 members, which is a big family full of love.
An experiment to save young marmosets
Using the characteristics of marmosets, Gong Neng's team designed three groups of experiments. They found that babies under 2 months can especially stimulate the rescue behavior of monkey parents, while young monkeys over 2 months can't make monkey parents respond. And as long as it is a monkey baby under 2 months old, whether it is their own child or not, the monkey parents will make rescue behavior. In a family with a baby monkey at home, the crying of the baby monkey will prompt the older members of the family to make rescue actions, and the parents of the monkey will also help each other. How did they come to this conclusion?
Scientists put an island (platform) in a rectangular room. There are two cages on the island. Both cages have mechanisms. One has a little marmoset in it, and the other has a still life (ball) as a reference. There is a 50 cm canal between the island and the entrance to the room. The monkey's parents must overcome the fear in the water, jump over the canal B, open the cage with a lever and rescue the little monkey C; Then cross the canal and jump back to d. For the parents of marmosets who are only about 20 cm long, it is not easy to jump over this 50 cm canal. If there is nothing particularly urgent, they will not skip it easily.
Experiment 1: parents of monkeys who are "responsive" to baby monkeys.
In the first group of experiments, parents of monkeys can see little monkeys and hear their cries. If there is a ball in the cage, the monkey's parents will certainly not jump over it; Even delicious food, they are indifferent; However, when a little monkey was kept in a cage for less than 30 days, scientists found that no matter how many times, the monkey's parents would jump over and try to open the cage. However, the parents of young monkeys over 2 months old rarely come to the rescue.
Scientists also found that when only the monkey's father or mother was present, they responded to the rescue faster than when both were present. Is it because of dependence that you hesitate? After being single for a long time, girls can carry gas tanks and boys can cook and wash clothes, which seems to have the same effect as this study.
Moreover, it has been reported that adult marmosets are more willing to make altruistic behaviors and share food when facing marmosets who need help alone. When you are with a group, sharing is not easy. Is everyone in the group really shy? Of course, it may be that there are too many monkeys and not enough food …
Experiment 2: Other people's babies are also babies!
Scientists made a more complicated experiment. They put young monkeys, young monkeys and other people's young monkeys and balls in cages respectively. It turns out that as long as the young monkey belongs to his own family or someone else's family, his parents will make rescue actions, and the treatment of the young monkey and the ball is similar-no monkey tube (young monkey: I'm just a ball? )。
The funniest thing is that when scientists blocked one side of the cage and let the monkey parents jump on the island, they couldn't see the little monkeys moving in the cage, only heard the noise they made. More than 90% of the time, the parents of monkeys jump over. But after jumping, only 65,438+00% monkey parents opened the cage when they found the young monkeys in the cage and rescued them. The treatment of baby monkeys is much better, and most of them have been saved, whether they are parents' own monkeys or not. Monkey: I was a baby once.
Scientists also recorded and compared the cries for help between young monkeys and young monkeys, and found that the cries for help of young monkeys were more frequent and diverse, mainly crying and vibrato; However, the cries of adolescent monkeys are mixed with anxiety and fear, with short duration and single frequency. When scientists put the stereo in the cage to play the cry for help of the little monkey, whether it is their own or not, the little monkey's voice can attract the monkey's parents to jump over, but the little monkey's voice can't. In a word, the parents of the monkey don't think it is necessary to save the young monkey. This is the real hammer (rebellious human youth, thanks to your's parents for never leaving).
Experiment 3: The baby monkey makes the family more loving.
However, the fact that parents of monkeys generally respond to the cry for help of baby monkeys also exists in human beings. Parents will react very quickly to the baby's crying, and even if they fall asleep, they will wake up soon. Parents often look back when they hear the baby's voice in the street. Even if your baby is around, you will have special love for other people's babies. If there are no children at home or the children have grown up, the love for the baby will be much weaker. Therefore, scientists designed a third group of experiments, focusing on whether the family structure has an impact on whether or not to rescue. They found that in a family with a little monkey, adult monkey brothers and sisters would not help each other, but would help the little monkey. If there are no baby monkeys in the family at present, all family members will not make rescue actions and may not be able to empathize.
In addition, in a family with a little monkey, the cry of the little monkey will prompt the husband and wife to save each other. In order to verify that the mutual rescue of the monkey's parents is not to save the little monkey, the scientists also replaced the monkey's father/mother in the cage with a toy of similar size, so that even if the monkey's baby cries for help, the monkey's father/mother will not carry out rescue behavior. So having a baby can promote parents to save each other, and monkey brothers and sisters can save the monkey baby. Sure enough, every baby is an angel who comes to spread love.
Evidence from brain science
Gong Neng's team further observed the marmoset's brain by cooperating with Dr. Liang Zhifeng's research team from the Brain Intelligence Center. They found that when they heard the baby's cry for help, many brain regions of marmoset parents with babies were activated, while those without babies were not. The sound of adolescent monkeys will slightly activate the brain regions of parents, but it still has no effect on the brains of parents without babies.
As for why there is such an experimental result, scientists think it may be that young marmosets have mastered most of their motor skills, and their parents think they can live independently. The rescue of young monkeys by brothers and sisters is a unique behavior of marmosets' large family rearing model. The kinship among family members plays an important role in the evolution and reproduction of nonhuman mammals, and this behavior pattern will be passed on to the next generation through heredity, and over time, it will form a unique altruistic behavior and family pattern of marmosets.
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After reading this article, do young people who are being rejected by their parents feel the power of nature? However, marmosets and humans are not exactly the same. Generally speaking, human teenagers are considered to be incapable of self-reliance and can still be taken care of by their parents at home. However, while taking care of you, you should also be considerate and love your parents. After all, you are no longer babies. The reason why parents are still willing to tolerate and love you is probably because your birth has made them feel the different colors and temperatures of the world.
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