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A team of biologists and wildlife specialists from the University of Notre Dame and Duke University, in the U.S., and Amboseli Baboon Research Project, in Kenya, has found evidence that female baboons who have relatively strong ties with their fathers while growing up tend to live longer lives. For their study, in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, the group tracked the lifespans of more than 200 wild female baboons living in Kenya.

Prior research has shown that most primate fathers typically play little to no role in raising their young—humans appear to be the main exception. In this new effort, the research team has found that the connection between father and daughter baboons can make a difference in female longevity.

To learn more about any possible impacts on young female baboons who spend more time with their fathers compared to others in their group, the research team tracked the longevity of 216 female baboons fathered by 102 males living in multiple regions in Kenya. They went back and looked at living arrangements and grooming interactions for those same females as they were growing up.

They found that females who lived in the same group of baboons as their father during their first four years, or who also engaged in some grooming interactions with their fathers, lived on average two to four years longer than females with no such interactions with their fathers.

The researchers note that female baboons live on average 18 years and produce offspring roughly every 18 months—thus, an extra few years could allow female to produce more offspring, potentially enhancing both her own and her father's reproductive success. While the study demonstrates that strong early-life relationships with fathers are associated with increased female longevity, further research is needed to determine whether these social interactions directly cause increased survival or are linked to other factors.

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