Lots of wild animals often do babysitting duty. Young female elephants who haven't had babies yet like to help guide and take care of baby elephants.
Recently, a team of researchers at the Southwest Forestry University in China noticed that during the breeding (繁殖) season, black-and-white snub-nosed monkeys passed around their babies a lot. The monkeys would take turns to carry or even feed the newborns.
This behaviour reminded the team of the way humans babysit for each other. So they decided to watch the monkeys more closely. They followed the group for six months and recorded more than 400 scenes in which a female monkey interacted (互动) with a mother and newborn or gently pulled them closer.
Once the newborns had grown up a bit, the mothers would allow other females to take care of them. They made their decision according to who has the most parenting experience. After a more experienced monkey had given up her babysitting duty, the younger females with less experience would still be allowed to look after the babies.
Cui Chunyan, one of the researchers in the study, mentioned that this helps the younger females to learn more about parenting to prepare them for having their own babies in the future. She also said that more research needs to be done to find out if mothers make their choices based on the social status of other monkeys or on whether they are related to each other.