Monkeys are less cuddly with each other when dealing with an infection, study finds

(Purdue University) Wren, a visiting scholar in the Department of Anthropology at Purdue University, spent a year studying wild vervet monkey troops in South Africa, tracking both their social grooming behavior and their parasite load. Her results, some of which were published Wednesday (April 21) in PLOS ONE showed evidence that monkeys carrying certain gastrointestinal parasites do not groom others as much as those without the parasite, and that routes of transmission may not be as clear cut as biologists think.
Source: EurekAlert! - Social and Behavioral Science - Category: International Medicine & Public Health Source Type: news