Higher social tolerance is associated with more complex facial behavior in macaques

• DOI: 10.7554/elife.87008
• Publication Date: 2023-05-05T08:14:12Z
• Authors: Alan V Rincon; Bridget M Waller; Julie Duboscq; Alexander Mielke; Claire Pérez; Peter R Clark; Jérôme Micheletta
• Keywords: Social Complexity; Rhesus macaque

The social complexity hypothesis for communicative posits that animal societies with more complex systems require communication systems. We tested the on three macaque species vary in their degree of tolerance and complexity. coded facial behavior >3000 interactions across contexts (aggressive, submissive, affiliative) 389 animals, using Facial Action Coding System macaques (MaqFACS). quantified measures uncertainty: entropy, specificity, prediction error. found relative entropy was higher tolerant crested as compared to less Barbary rhesus all contexts, indicating frequently use a diversity behavior. context specificity macaques, demonstrating used flexibly different contexts. Finally, random forest classifier predicted from highest accuracy lowest crested, there is uncertainty macaques. Overall, our results support hypothesis.