Spontaneous eye blink rate indicates increased attention during grooming in female Barbary macaques (opens in new tab)

Spontaneous eye blinking is a ubiquitous behavior in animals including humans necessary for lubricating the ocular surface and preventing dryness. Beyond this functional role, eye blinking also provides a window into an animal’s cognitive state and attention allocation. Here in a purely observational study, we investigated in 13 female Barbary macaques (Macaca sylvanus) the modulation of spontaneous eye blinking during two naturally occurring activities differing in their attentional demand (...