Humans aren’t the only species that provide aid to one another without expectation of reward, scientists have discovered.
Chimpanzees do so as well, but generally only when the help is requested.
Researchers at the Primate Research Institute and the Wildlife Research Centre of Japan’s Kyoto University found that chimpanzees will help their peers even if there is no personal gain or immediate payback. But the animals need to be asked for help first, as they rarely volunteer assistance.
This form of unselfishness could have been what led to altruism in humans, Shinya Yamamoto and his colleagues said in a recently published study in the online science journal PLoS ONE.
EXPERIMENTS
Researchers conducted two experiments with six pairs of chimpanzees. Three of those were mothers and their children. The other three were non-related adults. Animals were placed in see-through cages.
In one test, the animal needed a straw to drink some juice from a box. In the other, it needed a stick to pull the juice box into its cage. At first, the animal that needed the straw had the stick and vice versa. In a second test of the mother-child pairings, the animals were put into a situation with no chance of reward, since each animal was assigned a set role, either as the helper or the helped.
SEEKING HELP
In 24 attempts, during which roles were constantly reversed, researchers saw that the animals would hand over the tools their partner required. The help came only after the partner had actively sought help, however, either by extending a hand through an opening or clapping hands.
Results were the same when there was no possibility of reciprocity and when the pairs were unrelated animals.
“Communicative interaction played an important role in altruism in chimpanzees,” Yamamoto said. “Whereas humans help others without being asked to do so, chimpanzees almost never freely offer a useful tool to partners in difficulties.”
Only offering aid when expressly asked to do so could serve a function. It insures that the helper does not offer assistance that is possibly not needed. Now researchers will need to ask whether voluntary altruism is a unique characteristic of humans.
Indonesia was to sign an agreement to repatriate two British nationals, including a grandmother languishing on death row for drug-related crimes, an Indonesian government source said yesterday. “The practical arrangement will be signed today. The transfer will be done immediately after the technical side of the transfer is agreed,” the source said, identifying Lindsay Sandiford and 35-year-old Shahab Shahabadi as the people being transferred. Sandiford, a grandmother, was sentenced to death on the island of Bali in 2013 after she was convicted of trafficking drugs. Customs officers found cocaine worth an estimated US$2.14 million hidden in a false bottom in Sandiford’s suitcase when
CAUSE UNKNOWN: Weather and runway conditions were suitable for flight operations at the time of the accident, and no distress signal was sent, authorities said A cargo aircraft skidded off the runway into the sea at Hong Kong International Airport early yesterday, killing two ground crew in a patrol car, in one of the worst accidents in the airport’s 27-year history. The incident occurred at about 3:50am, when the plane is suspected to have lost control upon landing, veering off the runway and crashing through a fence, the Airport Authority Hong Kong said. The jet hit a security patrol car on the perimeter road outside the runway zone, which then fell into the water, it said in a statement. The four crew members on the plane, which
Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and its junior partner yesterday signed a coalition deal, paving the way for Sanae Takaichi to become the nation’s first female prime minister. The 11th-hour agreement with the Japan Innovation Party (JIP) came just a day before the lower house was due to vote on Takaichi’s appointment as the fifth prime minister in as many years. If she wins, she will take office the same day. “I’m very much looking forward to working with you on efforts to make Japan’s economy stronger, and to reshape Japan as a country that can be responsible for future generations,”
SEVEN-MINUTE HEIST: The masked thieves stole nine pieces of 19th-century jewelry, including a crown, which they dropped and damaged as they made their escape The hunt was on yesterday for the band of thieves who stole eight priceless royal pieces of jewelry from the Louvre Museum in the heart of Paris in broad daylight. Officials said a team of 60 investigators was working on the theory that the raid was planned and executed by an organized crime group. The heist reignited a row over a lack of security in France’s museums, with French Minister of Justice yesterday admitting to security flaws in protecting the Louvre. “What is certain is that we have failed, since people were able to park a furniture hoist in the middle of
RSS