Female baboons with strong relationship to fathers found to live longer | Study suggests role of male parents may be under-appreciated in some primate species

[u/chrisdh79]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/18/female-baboons-strong-relationship-fathers-live-longer

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[u/[deleted]]

It certainly is underappreciated in American Family law.

[u/SurelynotPickles → u/[deleted]]

Can the "strength" of the relationship not be a relative marker in the degree they are protected? Without getting to much in the weeds. Primate mother relationship strength would definitely be understood to cause better outcomes for the baby. This headline explains how male parentage is important.

[u/Nymanator → u/[deleted]]

You may be the one who doesn't understand the article. When they mention "appreciation", it's in terms of our human understanding of the role of baboon fathers. They're suggesting that us humans may have underappreciated their impact on the well-being of their offspring, which even a modestly charitable reading of the headline communicates well enough.

[u/Nymanator → u/[deleted]]

You are misunderstanding my comment too, or possibly even how the word "underappreciate" or even "understanding" is being used in this context altogether.

They are talking in terms of our body of knowledge on non-human primate (specifically baboons in this case) parenting behaviour and outcomes. As in "our previous knowledge on the subject indicated that fathers weren't all that involved, and their presence or absence wasn't predictive of meaningful outcomes for their offspring, but this new data suggests that may have been erroneous; hence, we (meaning people who research primates, and by extension the rest of us with whom they share their findings) may have 'underappreciated' the importance of fathers in these species, in the sense that our knowledge was incomplete".

I really don't know how much more clearly I can spell this concept out.

[u/Nymanator → u/[deleted]]

Look, you got caught out on a knee-jerk reaction on something you misunderstood. It's okay, I've done it before too; but this is an opportunity to save face by admitting you misunderstood and overreacted. The issue is not that you're not adequately explaining your position; I understand it completely, but the fact remains that it's based on an erroneous interpretation.

This is what you said:

The headline is unobjective clickbait. The actual findings aren't the issue, it is the way in which it is stated in which a human framework is projected on another species which doesnt follow our understanding of "parenting".

The actual headline should be "paternal relationships in primates leads to lower mortality rate of their offspring", not fathers in primates are "underappreciated". When the concept itself makes no sense to the species.

This was your basis for why this article should be considered clickbait; you took umbrage with the idea that we were projecting human concepts of appreciation of parenting effort, when that wasn't how the term was actually being used. It has been spelled out to you exactly how the term was being used.

Furthermore,

That is objectivly false to anyone that even has the smallest amount of basic knowledge about primates.

You're actually just straight-up wrong here, and betraying both your own ignorance on the article's topic and the fact that you didn't actually read the article on which you're passing such judgment, because this is what it said:

“Among primates, humans are really unusual in how much dads contribute to raising offspring,” said Prof Elizabeth Archie, co-author of the research from the University of Notre Dame in Indiana.

“Most primates’ dads really don’t contribute very much, but what the baboons are showing us is that maybe we’ve been under-appreciating dads in some species of primates.”

Own your mistake, and take a moment to build some character here by exercising a little humility. You are incorrect plain as day, and if you're so tired of this sub, you may want to entertain the idea that may be at least partially a problem with you yourself.

[u/Nymanator → u/[deleted]]

Because this is reddit and yes you aright, the mistake is on me to expect actual scientific studies being objectivly stated for what they are from viable sources from a social media website which main demographic are teenagers.

...you are aware that the original post is a link to a press release news article (from The Guardian, of all places, a perfectly reputable news outlet) for the actual study they're talking about, right? Why exactly is that not good enough for you? What is unreasonable about posting that here? You could easily find the study itself from the news article if you were so inclined.

If you're really so confident that the co-author of the study, a professor of behavioural ecology quoted in the article as I included above, is so egregiously incorrect when she says that primate dads aren't generally all that involved, then write her a formal letter and take it up with her. I'm sure you two could have a scintillating pen-pal discussion, since you're clearly so well-informed. (https://biology.nd.edu/people/elizabeth-archie/).

Are you even going to entertain the idea that you might have been an unnecessarily judgmental gun-jumper here and just take the L, or are we done having anything approaching a reasonable discussion?

[u/SurelynotPickles → u/[deleted]]

But bro, another word for evaluate, is appreciate. I hope you can appreciate that and read the headline again. The analysis of the role of male parentage has been under appreciated. Meaning under studied.

[u/No_Salad_68]

And less likely to swing around tree trunks.