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Targeted helping and cooperation in zoo-living chimpanzees and bonobos

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Date
10/03/2021
Author
Nolte, Suska
Call, Josep
Keywords
Cooperation
Chimpanzees
Altruism
Bonobos
Instrumental helping
RC0321 Neuroscience. Biological psychiatry. Neuropsychiatry
QH301 Biology
QL Zoology
DAS
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Abstract
Directly comparing the prosocial behaviour of our two closest living relatives, bonobos and chimpanzees, is essential to deepening our understanding of the evolution of human prosociality. We examined whether helpers of six dyads of chimpanzees and bonobos transferred tools to a conspecific. In the experiment ‘Helping’, transferring a tool did not benefit the helper, while in the experiment ‘Cooperation’, the helper only obtained a reward by transferring the correct tool. Chimpanzees did not share tools with conspecifics in either experiment, except for a mother–daughter pair, where the mother shared a tool twice in the experiment ‘Helping’. By contrast, all female–female bonobo dyads sometimes transferred a tool even without benefit. When helpers received an incentive, we found consistent transfers in all female–female bonobo dyads but none in male–female dyads. Even though reaching by the bonobo receivers increased the likelihood that a transfer occurred, we found no significant species difference in whether receivers reached to obtain tools. Thus, receivers' behaviour did not explain the lack of transfers from chimpanzee helpers. This study supports the notion that bonobos might have a greater ability to understand social problems and the collaborative nature of such tasks.
Citation
Nolte , S & Call , J 2021 , ' Targeted helping and cooperation in zoo-living chimpanzees and bonobos ' , Royal Society Open Science , vol. 8 , no. 3 , 201688 . https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.201688
Publication
Royal Society Open Science
Status
Peer reviewed
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.201688
ISSN
2054-5703
Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright © 2021 The Authors. Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.
Description
Funding: European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Seventh Framework 819 Programme (FP7/2017-2013) under grant agreement No. 609819 – SOMICS.
Collections
  • University of St Andrews Research
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10023/21689

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