"What does a mother or father do when looking at their own baby?" asked researcher Pier Francesco Ferrari of Italy's University of Parma. "They smile at them and exaggerate their gestures, modify their voice pitch -- the so-called 'motherese' -- and kiss them. What we found in mother macaques is very similar: They exaggerate their gestures, 'kiss' their baby and have sustained mutual gaze."

Ferrari also noted in humans, the communicative interactions go both ways. Newborns are sensitive to their mother's expressions, movements and voice, and they also mutually engage their mothers and are capable of emotional exchange.

"For years, these capacities were considered to be basically unique to humans," the researchers said, "although perhaps shared to some extent with chimpanzees." They said their findings extend those social skills to macaques, suggesting the infant monkeys may "have a rich internal world" that we are only now beginning to see.

"Our results demonstrate that humans are not unique in showing emotional communication between mother and infant," the researchers wrote. "Instead, we can trace the evolutionary foundation of those behaviors, which are considered crucial for the establishment of social exchange with others, to macaques."

The study appears in the online early edition of the journal Current Biology.

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