Getting by with a little help from their friends

WITHOUT the help of grand-parents siblings and friends, single mothers can find it difficult to raise a child.

Humans, it seems, are not unique in this regard. According to new research, our close relatives, the chimpanzees, also need help from their extended families when rearing their youngsters.

In 1960, Jane Goodall began documenting the day-to-day activities of chimps at Gombe in Tanzania. Records of dawn-to-dusk observations, she and her successors made, are held at Duke University’s Jane Goodall Research Institute. There are detailed life-histories of over 200 chimps.