ABSTRACT
Social selection for defects has since been more or less assumed to be an obvious aspect of natural selection in animals. Charles. Darwin described social compensation for defects. This chapter describes that infant monkeys with a visual acuity deficit survived until seven months of age in a natural habitat in Thailand. Despite the fact that they were blind, all experimental animals learned to feed themselves by eating the easily available monkey biscuits and drinking at one of the six watering faucets in the cage. Vision is clearly an important sense mode in macaque monkeys. In a natural habitat, partially blind infants do not survive the first year. However, having normal vision is not apparantly necessary for normal social integration during that period. Certainly there is no evidence of social selection for a visual deficit in monkey infants. The blind infant survives partly because it benefits from the general protection afforded by permanent group living.
