427 cases going back 50 years show monkeys keep pets, too — shedding a light on the origins of animal friendship

Researchers at the University of Oxford documented primates grooming, carrying and even adopting animals from squirrels to stray dogs.

This behaviour may shed light on one of the defining features of our own species: our extraordinary relationships with other animals

Humans keep animals as pets. That’s not a trait completely unique to us, but it is rare, and it makes a certain evolutionary sense that one of the only other groups that dabble in pet ownership would be our fellow primates. According to a new study published in the journal Primates, as detailed by Popular…

Researchers have documented 427 cases of monkeys and apes forming friendly relationships with other animal species.

The cases we reviewed involved 88 primate species and their interactions with 127 other animal species

The first time I saw it, I wasn’t quite sure what I was looking at. A northern white-cheeked gibbon at Shanghai Zoo was holding and caressing a mouse that had wandered into its enclosure. It wasn’t trying to eat it or chase it away. Instead, the gibbon treated the tiny rodent with remarkable gentleness. I couldn’t stop