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Judi Lynn

(160,211 posts)
Fri Jun 23, 2017, 12:36 AM Jun 2017

True altruism seen in chimpanzees, giving clues to evolution of human cooperation



A pair of studies suggests the evolutionary roots of humanlike cooperation can be seen in chimpanzees, albeit in rudimentary forms.

curioustiger/iStockphoto


By Michael PriceJun. 19, 2017 , 3:00 PM


Whether it’s giving to charity or helping a stranger with directions, we often assist others even when there’s no benefit to us or our family members. Signs of such true altruism have been spotted in some animals, but have been difficult to pin down in our closest evolutionary relatives. Now, in a pair of studies, researchers show that chimpanzees will give up a treat in order to help out an unrelated chimp, and that chimps in the wild go out on risky patrols in order to protect even nonkin at home. The work may give clues to how such cooperation—the foundation of human civilization—evolved in humans.

“Both studies provide powerful evidence for forms of cooperation in our closest relatives that have been difficult to demonstrate in other animals besides humans,” says Brian Hare, an evolutionary anthropologist at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, who was not involved with the research.

In the first study, psychologists Martin Schmelz and Sebastian Grüneisen at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, trained six chimps at the Leipzig Zoo to play a sharing game. Each chimp was paired with a partner who was given a choice of four ropes to pull, each with a different outcome: give just herself a banana pellet; give just the subject a pellet; give both of them pellets; or forgo her turn and let her partner make the decision instead.

Unbeknownst to these partner chimpanzees, the chimp that always started the game—a female named Tai—was trained to always choose the last option, giving up her turn. From the partner’s point of view, this was a risky choice, Grüneisen says, as Tai risked losing out entirely on the banana pellets. Over dozens of trials, after Tai gave up her turn, the six partners pulled the rope that rewarded both themselves and Tai with a treat 75% of the time, indicating they valued her risking her own treats to help them.

More:
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/06/true-altruism-seen-chimpanzees-giving-clues-evolution-human-cooperation
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