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Sharing is one of the hallmarks of human behavior: give me a cookie and I’m more likely to give you one later. But our bonobo cousins have an odd variation on the practice. They share with strangers before friends. The finding is in the journal PLoS ONE. [Jingzhi Tan and Brian Hare, Bonobos Share with Strangers]
Researchers tested bonobo sharing in experiments involving fourteen of the apes. All were born in the wild. In the primary experiment, bonobos were placed in a cage with food, and they could choose to admit either a known member of their group, a stranger, or both. In 51 trials, most bonobos shared the feast, but they let the stranger in first.
Why choose an outsider over a friend? In another experiment, the scientists found bonobos only shared when doing so led to a social interaction. Giving up some food to strangers lets these apes expand their social network. This behavior may have evolved to promote social tolerance, in contrast with chimps' sometimes deadly aggression against strangers. Which means that even when food is offered, there's still no such thing as a free lunch.
—Sophie Bushwick
[The above text is a transcript of this podcast.]
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3 Comments
Add CommentiTunes feed still not working. Is this you guys or Apple?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf humans die out, I really hope it's the bonobos' descendants who evolve to be the next dominant species rather than chimps.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMaybe we should be doing a little preservation + uplift to give them a leg up. Even if we survive and thrive as an interplanetary and/or interstellar species, having intelligent bonobos around would be really nice. (Literally, it would seem.) And if we encounter other species, even if they are put off by our violent tendencies we may score some points with our choice to uplift such a peaceful species.
I'm about ready to give up on Scientific American, both the website and the podcast. Why am I even writing this here? It's getting pretty clear that nobody at this organisation even cares about what they are doing anymore. Hopefully this will be my last comment because I'm going to put some time into finding a new science website that hasn't just adopted a completely unmonitored sausage factory as its online stance. You know, the sort of organisation where if there are inaccuracies and terrible articles, and awful reprints from cheesy partner sites, or the central podcast feed is down for a month, somebody actually notices? Wouldn't that be refreshing?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI am now a science reader in search of actual science writers who care about stuff like science and being accurate and not being pointlessly trivial and having a podcast that works.