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Charitable monkeys show empathy for others: researchers

Monkeys enjoy performing charitable acts and are capable of empathizing with members of their own species, US researchers said.

The team taught capuchin monkeys a game involving food handouts in which players could adopt a selfish or helpful strategy. They found that even when the monkeys were paired with individuals they had never come across before they frequently adopted the helpful or “prosocial” option.

“The fact the capuchins predominantly selected the prosocial option must mean seeing another monkey receive food is satisfying or rewarding for them,” said Frans de Waal of Emory University in Atlanta. “We think it is self rewarding in the sense that the animals get something positive out of doing this.”

Studies involving brain scans of humans have found that when a person behaves charitably the reward centers of the brain light up. De Waal believes something similar may be happening in the monkeys.

In the experiment a researcher offered a monkey one of two tokens. If it chose the selfish token it received a slice of apple, but another monkey paired with it received nothing.

If it chose the helpful token it got the same reward, but its partner also received food.

Whatever the pairing, the animals chose the non-selfish option more frequently, but if the partner was a relative or a member of its group it chose that option even more frequently.

The research is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

When a monkey adopted the non-selfish option it spent more time engaging with the other monkey, suggesting that the charitable act is the product of genuine interest in another individual.

When the researchers placed a barrier between the monkeys so they could not see each other, the monkeys became more selfish.

When the non-selfish option changed so that the other monkey received a more desirable reward — a grape — the monkeys chose to be helpful far less often.
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