Chimpanzees are indifferent to the welfare of unrelated group members
Humans are an unusually prosocial species—we vote, give blood, recycle, give tithes and punish violators of social norms. Experimental evidence indicates that people willingly incur costs to help strangers in anonymous one-shot interactions, and that altruistic behaviour is motivated, at least in part, by empathy and concern for the welfare of others (hereafter referred to […]
Cooperative behavior of laboratory rats (Rattus norvegicus) in an instrumental task
Cooperation is a cognitively demanding, complex social behavior, found primarily in primates. Here we investigated mutualism in rats (Rattus Norvegicus), a simple form of cooperation in which two subjects work on operant task, receiving immediate and simultaneous sucrose reward for a joint action. To receive the sucrose reward, familiar pairs of rats were required to […]
Do friends help each other? Patterns of female coalition formation in wild bonobos at Wamba
Patterns of coalitionary aggression among female animals are generally explained by kin selection theory. Frequent female coalitions are almost exclusively observed in female-philopatric species, where females stay in their natal group, and females typically form coalitions with their kin. Bonobos, Pan paniscus, in contrast, are male-philopatric, with females emigrating to new groups at adolescence, but […]