Like humans, young chimpanzees associate with their mothers all the way into adulthood. Unlike in humans, offspring no longer depend on maternal food sharing beyond the weaning age. Therefore, the reasons for and consequences of these years of post-weaning mother-offspring associations are unclear. Using long-term behavioural and hormonal data from wild chimpanzees in the Taï Forest, Côte d’Ivoire, researchers from the Taï Chimpanzee Project at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, have revealed that mothers may be shaping pre-adult growth and offspring muscle mass even without direct provisioning. We compared growth of young chimpanzees with a mother until adulthood compared to those who had experienced maternal loss after weaning.