ReviewProceedings. Biological sciences2017
Looking for unity in diversity: human cooperative childcare in comparative perspective.
Review in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
14 citing papers in PubMed, 39 citations in OpenAlex.
- Can I Have a Bite? The Influence of Infant Begging on Food Sharing in Capuchin Monkeys (Sapajus Libidinosus).American journal of primatology · 2026Article
- Anatomical Evidence for a Uniquely Human Depressor Anguli Oris and a Novel Helplessness Signaling Hypothesis.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2026Article
- An integrative, peer-reviewed and open-source cooperative-breeding database (Co-BreeD).The Journal of animal ecology · 2025Article
- Cooperative Breeding as a Likely Early Catalyst of Human Evolution.Evolutionary anthropology · 2025Review
- A computational approach to selective attention in embodied approaches to cognitive archaeology.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2024Review
- The child who lived: Down syndrome among Neanderthals?Science advances · 2024Article
- The proximate regulation of prosocial behaviour: towards a conceptual framework for comparative research.Animal cognition · 2024Review
- Hunter-Gatherer children's close-proximity networks: Similarities and differences with cooperative and communal breeding systems.Evolutionary human sciences · 2024Article
- Harsh environments promote alloparental care across human societies.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2020Article
- The emergence of emotionally modern humans: implications for language and learning.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2020Review
- Baby cry recognition is independent of motherhood but improved by experience and exposure.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2020Article
- The neural mechanisms and consequences of paternal caregiving.Nature reviews. Neuroscience · 2019Review
- Humans as model organisms.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2017Article
- Humans as a model for understanding biological fundamentals.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2017Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Humans engage in cooperative childcare, which includes some elements not found in other animals, such as the presence of post-reproductive helpers, extensive food sharing among adults and a pervasive sexual division of labour. In animals, cooperative offspring care has typically been studied in two different contexts. The first mainly involves helpers contributing care in cooperatively breeding family groups; the second context is allomaternal care in species usually not categorized as cooperative breeders (e.g. plural and communal breeders, often without male care). Comparative analyses suggest that cooperative breeding and allomaternal care in plural and communal breeders have distinct evolutionary origins, with humans fitting neither pathway entirely. Nevertheless, some critical proximate mechanisms of helping, including hormonal regulators, are likely to be shared across species. Other mechanisms may vary among species, such as social tolerance, proactive prosociality or conditional mother-infant bonding. These are presumably associated with specific details of the care system, such as whether all group members contribute, or whether mothers can potentially raise offspring alone. Thus, cooperative offspring care is seen in different contexts across animal lineages, but may nonetheless share several important psychological characteristics. We end by discussing how work on humans may play a unifying role in studying cooperative offspring care.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.