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<div class="timestamp">April 23, 2012</div>
<h1>The Spirit of Sisterhood Is in the Air and on the Air</h1>
<span><h6 class="byline">By <a rel="author" href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/a/natalie_angier/index.html?inline=nyt-per" title="More Articles by Natalie Angier" class="meta-per">NATALIE ANGIER</a></h6>
</span>
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<p>
When first we meet Hannah, the wondrously mopey mid-20s heroine of HBO’s
new hit series “Girls,” she seems to have more strikes against her than
a bowling alley at Fenway Park. Her parents have cut off her monthly
stipend. Her literary-magazine boss refuses to turn her unpaid
internship into a real job. Her atonal lover explores his sex fantasies
on her awkwardly untitillated body. She lives in New York City. She
majored in English. </p>
<p>
Yet offsetting all those slings and risk factors is a powerful defense
system: girlfriends. Hannah has a tight-knit network of three female
confederates, one best friend and two sturdy runners-up; and while none
of the girl-women can offer much material support, no spare bedroom in a
rent-controlled apartment, they are each other’s emotional tourniquets.
You, fat? Don’t make me laugh. An unpleasant doctor’s appointment?
We’re going too. Lena Dunham, the creator and star of the series, has
said that while her titular characters may all date men, female
friendship is “the true romance of the show.” </p>
<p>
As in urban jungles, so too in jungle jungles. Researchers have lately
gathered abundant evidence that female friendship is one of nature’s
preferred narrative tools. </p>
<p>
In animals as diverse as African elephants and barnyard mice, blue
monkeys of Kenya and feral horses of New Zealand, affiliative,
longlasting and mutually beneficial relationships between females turn
out to be the basic unit of social life, the force that not only binds
existing groups together but explains why the animals’ ancestors
bothered going herd in the first place. </p>
<p>
Scientists are moving beyond the observational stage — watching as a
couple of female monkeys groom each other into a state of hedonic
near-liquefaction — to quantifying the benefits of that well-groomed
friendship to both picking partners. Researchers have discovered that
female chacma baboons with strong sororal bonds have lower levels of
stress hormones, live significantly longer and rear a greater number of
offspring to independence than do their less socialized peers. </p>
<p>
Similarly, wild mares with female friends are harassed less often by
stallions and have more surviving foals than do mares that lack social
ties. Female mice allowed to choose a friend as a nesting partner will
bear more pups than females forced to share straw space with a mouse
they dislike. </p>
<p>
And female elephants keep in touch with their chums through frequent
exchanges of low-pitched vocalizations called rumbles. “We liken it to
an elephant cellphone,” said Joseph Soltis, a research scientist who
works with elephants at Disney’s Animal Kingdom in Florida. “They’re
texting each other, I’m over here. Where are you?” </p>
<p>
Hannah may even be onto something primal, or at least primate, in
setting the size of her inner circle of friends. Researchers have
determined that a female baboon with a small but devoted core of
grooming companions will be less prone to jagged spikes of the stress
hormone <a href="http://health.nytimes.com/health/guides/test/cortisol-level/overview.html?inline=nyt-classifier" title="In-depth reference and news articles about Cortisol level." class="meta-classifier">cortisol</a> than a female who casts her social net wide but not deep. </p>
<p>
The ideal buddy count? “To have a top three seems to be what’s important
here,” said Joan B. Silk, a primatologist at the University of
California, Los Angeles. With a trio to lean on, she added, “you see the
kind of strong, stable relationships that help females cope better with
stress.” </p>
<p>
Some signs of female camaraderie are easy to spot. Lionesses suckle each
other’s cubs. Female spotted hyenas greet each other through elaborate
ceremonies of mutual trust, lifting a leg and exposing their famously
penislike genitals to their snuffling sisters and their bone-crushing
jaws. </p>
<p>
Elephants touch trunks, share food, play lifeguard for the day. Dr.
Soltis cited the time a female elephant rescue the wayward baby of her
closest friend after it stumbled headlong into the elephant submersion
pool, by hauling the panicked calf out with her trunk. Hey Hortense
where RU? Got Dumbo. Bring towel. </p>
<p>
Sometimes displays of female friendship become heated, hyperbolic, a
monkey chant for the home team. Marina Cords of Columbia University has
spent more than 30 years studying the blue monkeys of Kenya, 10-pound
primates that, their name notwithstanding, are really charcoal gray.
</p>
<p>
She has seen many violent territorial disputes between neighboring
monkey groups, in which the adult females line up to fight in the
treetops, the adult males mostly hang back to watch, and the young
monkeys scamper obliviously below. The females scream, lunge, bite, rip
the flesh of an enemy’s calf down to a bloody frill round the ankle. And
when the battle ends, the salon sessions begin. </p>
<p>
“There’s a frenzy of grooming among the females in the same group,” Dr.
Cords said. “You see them huddling together in clusters, with
individuals scooting from one huddle to another, as though everybody is
trying to groom as many individuals as possible.” They comb and pluck
with their fingers, soothe scabs and wounds with their lips. </p>
<p>
Through grooming, the monkeys decompress, and remind one another that
their fates are still linked. After all, should a group of blue monkeys
grow too large it will split into factions, and the sisterly comrades of
today may be flaying you a new pair of anklets tomorrow. Shall we
groom? </p>
<p>
In other cases, affiliative behaviors are subtle and difficult to track.
For years female chimpanzees were viewed as asocial, content to forage
alone or with dependent offspring while largely ignoring other females
of their group. The males may be legendary kin-based allies, born and
reared together and wedded to their natal turf. But as the so-called
dispersing sex, female chimpanzees must leave their birthplace at <a href="http://health.nytimes.com/health/guides/specialtopic/puberty-and-adolescence/overview.html?inline=nyt-classifier" title="In-depth reference and news articles about Puberty and adolescence." class="meta-classifier">puberty</a>
and seek asylum in another group, which means being surrounded by
unrelated females all competing for the same goods. What’s to like about
that? </p>
<p>
In a 10-year study of West African chimpanzees, however, Julia Lehmann
of Roehampton University in London discovered that at least for her
population, the stereotype of the standoffish female was wrong. Her
adult females were cultivating friendships and expressing their
affections in myriad ways — staying within eye contact as they foraged
by day, resting back to back while relaxing at home. </p>
<p>
“Most of the females in my study have at least one close associate with
whom they always hang out,” Dr. Lehmann said. Coalitions between the
males may be showier, she said, but female friendships appear more
resilient, lasting until one member of the bonded pair dies. </p>
<p>
Dr. Lehmann does not yet know why female chimpanzees seek female
friends. But it’s not as a deterrent to male aggression. “Male
chimpanzees are so dominant that even two females can’t do much against
them,” Dr. Lehmann said. </p>
<p>
Instead, Dr. Lehmann and others suspect that the story for chimpanzees
will turn out to be similar to what’s been shown in female baboons. For
baboons, friendship is not about extra weaponry. It’s about biochemistry
and predictability. </p>
<p>
According to Robert M. Seyfarth of the University of Pennsylvania, who with his colleague Dorothy L. Cheney, recently <a title="Read the abstract. " href="http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-psych-120710-100337">reported</a>
in the Annual Review of Psychology on the evolutionary origins of
friendship, baboon life is extremely stressful, especially for females.
</p>
<p>
Male baboons are comparatively huge and nasty. The ones you know boss
you around and bite off the tip of your ear. The ones you don’t are
infanticidal. Leopards are always leaping. Food is scarce. </p>
<p>
“You have to have somebody to hang onto,” Dr. Seyfarth said. “A friend
gives you an element of predictability and certainty, and you can use
that to buffer you against all the things you don’t have control over.
There’s a biochemical component to this.” </p>
<p>
A familiar friend calms and equilibrates, mops up the cortisol spills
that can weaken the immune system, and in so doing may help lengthen
life — in baboons, humans and other group-minded kinds. “Yes, having
coffee with friends is good for you,” Dr. Silk said, “and we should all
do it often.” </p>
<p>
You look gorgeous. Have a cookie. Now tell me what’s on your mind. </p>
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<br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)<br><a href="mailto:art.deco.studios@gmail.com" target="_blank">art.deco.studios@gmail.com</a><br>