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Related Experiment Videos

Chimpanzees recruit the best collaborators.

Alicia P Melis1, Brian Hare, Michael Tomasello

  • 1Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, D-04103, Germany. melis@eva.mpg.de

Science (New York, N.Y.)
|March 4, 2006
PubMed
Summary
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Chimpanzees, like humans, can recognize when collaboration is needed and choose the most effective partner. These shared skills suggest an ancient evolutionary origin for cooperation before complex human collaboration developed.

Area of Science:

  • Primate behavior
  • Evolutionary psychology
  • Comparative cognition

Background:

  • Human collaboration with non-kin is unique, but its evolutionary roots are not fully understood.
  • Understanding the origins of human collaborative skills requires examining our closest living relatives.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the evolutionary foundations of human collaborative skills by studying chimpanzees.
  • To determine if chimpanzees possess the ability to recognize the necessity of collaboration and select optimal partners.

Main Methods:

  • Chimpanzees were presented with collaboration tasks requiring them to decide when to recruit a partner.
  • Participants also had to choose between potential partners based on prior experience.

Main Results:

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  • Chimpanzees recruited a collaborator exclusively when the task necessitated joint effort.
  • Individuals selected the more effective partner based on previous performance data.

Conclusions:

  • Chimpanzees demonstrate key skills for collaboration: recognizing its need and identifying the best partner.
  • These abilities, shared with humans, likely existed in the common ancestor, predating complex human cooperation.