Abstract
The goals of the present study were to verify the existence of allogrooming site preference and whether dominance rank affected the choice of body sites being groomed. The subjects were 5 adult females of the common chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) group at Pilsen Zoo (Czech Republic, n = 7).
Data were collected over a period of three months, during 92 observation hours. The frequency and duration of grooming at different body sites were recorded using whole-day focal following.
Females? dominance ranks were determined on the basis of observed frequencies of submissive behaviours. The results showed that the proportions of grooming frequencies and duration were highly positively correlated.
Therefore, only frequencies were used for statistical analysis. To test for a preference of grooming body sites, Friedman ANOVA was used.
For the effect of rank on the grooming distribution, the Spearman rank correlation test was carried out.