My work pictured by AI – Jessie C. Adriaense

What is this work about? Joint actions require various coordination mechanisms in order to achieve a successful joint outcome. To understand how joint action evolved in humans, research requires a comparative approach by investigating whether other animals have similar motoric and mental coordination skills that would facilitate their joint actions. Common marmosets are cooperative breeders, just like humans, and thus their parental care system forms an ideal model to further investigate the different proximate mechanisms of joint action. This study focusses on infant transfers in marmosets, a highly important and risky joint action, for which both parents are required to coordinate efficiently. How marmosets exactly achieve a successful transfer, and what the relevant traits are, is unknown. To this end, we analyzed motor coordination during transfers, including micro-analyses of coordination signals such as touch and mutual gaze between parents. All our data was collected in captive housing as first stage of this project and we are developing a protocol for research in the field, to further understand how ecological conditions impact this behavior.

The first word that came to mind when seeing the AI-generated picture? Alliance.