Adolescents are known for risky behavior, with teenagers in the U.S. more likely than younger children to die from injury. But what’s responsible for this uptick in risk-taking around puberty?

Our new observations of physical risk-taking in chimpanzees suggests that the rise in risk-taking in human adolescence isn’t due to a new yen for danger. Rather, a decrease in supervision gives teens more opportunities to take risks.

We study locomotion in chimpanzees, one of humans’ closest relatives. It’s difficult to study physical risk-taking in people because it is not ethical to put anyone in danger. Chimpanzees are good alternative study subjects, since wild chimps of all ages need to move through the trees, often at great heights.

While working with us, Bryce Murray, an undergraduate student at the University of Michigan, noticed that some of the movements that chimpanzees perform in the trees are more dangerous than others.

Typically, chimpanzees climb or swing while keeping a secure grip on branches. However, they also leap across gaps and sometimes let go of a branch entirely, dropping down to another branch or the ground. Unfortunately, they don’t always nail the landing. Years of observations in the........

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