Altruism in Chimpanzees

Written by Lennart Kiil

Friday, 29 June 2007

Chimpanzees can be altruistic in the same way as human infants. Courtesy of idw-online.de

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology have found evidence that humans are not unique in altruistic behaviour toward unrelated individuals. Our closest living evolutionary relatives, the chimpanzees, were studied. In two experiments they helped an unfamiliar human to the same degree as human infants. The help was provided whether the chimpanzees were being rewarded or not and whether the helping was costly to the helper or not. The investigation goes further than earlier ones because the individual receiving the help is unknown to the chimpanzees. That these results are similar to what is found in human babies indicate that the altruistic tendencies found early in child development have not arisen recently in humans. Likely they would be found also in a common ancestor. The researchers note that culture might play a central role in the way that innate altruism is expressed in modern humans. Reference: Spontaneous Altruism by Chimpanzees and Young Children Warneken F, Hare B, Melis AP, Hanus D, Tomasello M PLoS Biology Vol. 5, No. 7, e184 doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0050184

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