In two different settings, chimpanzees helped human infants to a stick they could not reach. In a third setting, a chimpanzee helped another chimp get into a closed room full of food.

Previously, scientists thought that altruism (help toward others without the possibility of personal reward) only developed within humans after humans evolved away from chimpanzees. Because of this study, it is now considered that altruism may have occurred further back than six millions years ago—the time when it is believed humans and chimpanzees evolved separately from their primitive ape ancestor.

From The Times article, German psychologist Felix Warneken, from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (Leipzig, Germany) states, “We thought we were very different from other animals including our primate relatives, but this is not the case. At least some altruism may have been present in the common ancestor to humans and chimpanzees.”

Warneken and Brian Hare, who is also from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, performed the study. It was performed at the Ngamba Island Chimpanzee Sanctuary in Uganda (Africa).

The study will be published (titled “Spontaneous altruism by chimpanzees and young children”) the week of June 25-29, 2007, in the Biology journal of the Public Library of Science (PLoS). An abstract of the article appears at: http://biology.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pbio.0050184.

Other contributors included Alicia P. Melis, Daniel Hanus, and Michael Tomasello. All five researchers are with the Department of Developmental and Comparative Psychology, within Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.

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Biology  Psychology  Research  Science  William Atkins