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Charles Darwin had more in common with chimpanzees than even he realized. Before he was universally known for his theory of natural selection, the young naturalist made a decision that has long been hailed as the type of behavior that fundamentally separates humans from other apes.
In 1858, before Darwin published On the Origin of Species, his friend Alfred Russel Wallace mailed Darwin his own theory of evolution that closely matched what Darwin had secretly been working on for more than two decades. Instead of racing to publish and ignoring Wallace’s work, Darwin included Wallace’s outline alongside his own abstract so that the two could be presented jointly before the Linnean Society the following month. “I would far rather burn my whole book than that [Wallace] or any man should think that I had behaved in a paltry spirit,” Darwin wrote.
This kind of prosocial behavior, a form of altruism that seeks to benefit others and promote cooperation, has now been found in chimps, the species that Darwin did more than any other human to connect us with. (This month's Science Agenda, about medical testing in chimps, notes other similarities that have been documented in chimps and humans.) In the study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, primatologist Frans de Waal and his colleagues at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center at Emory University presented chimps with a simplified version of the choice that Darwin faced.
Pairs of chimps were brought into a testing room where they were separated only by a wire mesh. On one side was a bucket containing 30 tokens that the chimpanzee could give to an experimenter for a food reward. Half of the tokens were of one color that resulted in only the chimpanzee that gave the token receiving a reward. The other tokens were of a different color that resulted in both chimpanzees receiving a food reward. If chimpanzees were motivated only by selfish interests, they would be expected to choose a reward only for themselves (or it should be 50–50 if they were choosing randomly). But individuals were significantly more likely to choose the prosocial outcome compared with the no-partner control.
De Waal says that previous studies showing chimps to be selfish may have been poorly designed. “The chimps had to understand a complex food-delivery system,” De Waal wrote via e-mail, “and were often placed so far apart that they may not have realized how their actions benefited others.” De Waal added that his study does not rule out the possibility that chimpanzees were influenced by reciprocal exchanges outside the experimental setting such as grooming or social support.
This latter possibility offers exciting research opportunities for the future. Chimpanzee society, like the greater scientific community that studies them, is built around such reciprocal exchanges. Science is a social activity, and sharing the rewards from one another’s research allows scientists to improve their work over time. Like the chimpanzees he would bond us with, Darwin recognized the utility of sharing rewards with others. Behaving in a “paltry spirit” was not the proper choice for a cooperative ape.
Adapted from The Primate Diaries, part of Scientific American's blog network.
This article was originally published with the title I've Got Your Back.
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10 Comments
Add CommentYou, and Darwinism is still off kilter. What happened to that first ape that caused it to convert from an ape to a human; how did it do it and what benefits did it receive from becoming human, and why didn't the other apes follow suit?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJamesDavis: Well, you see, the first ape had a human suit and the other ones didn't.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHahaha great answer trafalgar. Instead of giving the meathead a long course in basic evolution, you just point out that he has no understanding of his own arguement.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's a bit disturbing for the state of science education however, that so many people think that one day a single ape magically turned into a human. And then other apes 'decided' to as well.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAmusing... is it not that some one of "JamesDavis" rather profoundly limited understanding of science in general an the biological sciences in particular, is reading and posting on SciAM regarding the proverbial bedrock of all the biological sciences: evolution.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnyway, of course there are echos of every aspect of human behavior in other animals... esp. the large brained mammals, like ourselves. We may distinguish ourselves (somewhat) with language and abstract "thinking", but our strong-suit is deception... in which we are highly evolved and practiced "in the art".
Altruism is a complete misnomer... there is ALWAYS secondary gain... or it is reflexly done as per indoctrination (say "heroism" in a military setting... but even in that case, there are rewards in pomp/ceremony, medals, and a life of recognition as a "war hero"). All behavior is "transactional"... and sharing usually has its rewards. Cheers!
Don't worry about the state of science based on one comment Jordo0522, while there does seem to be a group of folks that are being influenced against science, there is another faction that is going full steam ahead.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHard to say what kind thinking allows you to ignore the fact that it is science and humanity that have made life so much better for thousands of years, but cognitive studies show a different brain patterns when folks are presented with the same stimulus.
Heck, we had people cheering about death penalties and refusing care to the poor, denying Darwin's theory seems tame by comparison.
First make sure the researchers are not liars.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn 2004 National Geographic tested four paleoartists by giving them the same fossil bones at different times without telling them other paleoartist would be creating drawings from the fossils. Not one of the drawings looked like the others—and none of them had any body hair on them!
The American Museum of Natural History has a life-sized African diorama with a hairy male and female homonids walking upright—based on the finding of a set of footprints! Ian Tattersall paleogeneticist said they debated whether they had eyebrows or not and said it could have been a man and a child…
Read pro-evolutionist Bill Bryson's best seller "A Short History of Nearly Everything" and discover on almost every other page the charlatanism, chicanery, lies, outright fraud—even murder—rampant in the sciences—especially paleontology.
I would dearly recommend a book to you that would answer all these questions of yours; it was published in 1859 ; however, I hesitate because your reply would most likely be: 'But I HAVE already got ONE book! And it's the ONLY one I'll ever lay my hands on.'
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou look at everything through a straw and it seems like that one book you mention is your straw. There is not one kind of bird, one kind of fish, one kind of animal or one kind of mammal. Every one of these evolved from their own DNA. Right now there are three species of human on this planet and which one do you think evolved from an ape and kept jumping from one bipedal to another bipedal until it became modern human? Every bird, fish, animal and mammal on this planet has similar DNA, but different enough to make them a different species and a human cannot interbreed with any other mammal, so which ape did we come from?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe book I recommend is by no means the last straw for me! In fact, it is the exact opposite; as it can explain the whole 'lego-game' of life by way of (yes, you mentioned it) DNA.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWith your theory, I cannot explain the difference between a chihuahua and a Great Dane, two breeds rather recently created, but not by chance or Intelligent Design I presume.So, would you ,please, explain .
I would also be very much obliged if you could kindly specify about 'three species of human's on this planet?
About hybridyzation chances, there was scientific news that Pan Troglodyte and Pan Paniscus did produce offspring together; but, isn't comforting to know that we Hom's S.S. have only a tiny bit of Neandertal and/or Denisovan DNA in our selves, and we definitely did not come from either of the above mentioned Pan Clan.
I thought this could be of interest to you and set your mind at rest.