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Related Experiment Video

Updated: May 19, 2026

Behavioral Assessment of Manual Dexterity in Non-Human Primates

Behavioral Assessment of Manual Dexterity in Non-Human Primates

Published on: November 11, 2011

No third-party punishment in chimpanzees.

Katrin Riedl¹, Keith Jensen, Josep Call

¹Department of Developmental and Comparative Psychology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

|August 29, 2012

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Chimpanzees retaliate when their own food is stolen but do not punish others for food theft. This suggests third-party punishment, crucial for human cooperation, may be unique to humans.

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Area of Science:

Behavioral Ecology
Primatology
Evolutionary Anthropology

Background:

Cooperation is maintained in human societies through punishment, particularly third-party punishment.
Third-party punishment involves punishing norm violators even when personally unaffected.
It remains unclear if nonhuman animals, including primates, engage in third-party punishment for noncooperation.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the presence of third-party punishment in chimpanzees, one of humans' closest living relatives.
To determine if chimpanzees punish individuals who steal food from others.

Main Methods:

An experimental study was conducted with chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes).
Researchers observed dominant chimpanzees' responses to food theft involving themselves versus third parties.

Main Results:

Dominant chimpanzees retaliated when their own food was stolen.
Dominant chimpanzees did not punish when food was stolen from unrelated or related third parties.

Conclusions:

Chimpanzees exhibit direct retaliation but not third-party punishment for food theft.
Third-party punishment may be a derived trait specific to the human lineage, distinguishing human cooperation mechanisms.