As much as we would like to think we're significantly superior as a species, we may not be as unique in our ability to cooperate with one another as first thought.

Research has found that chimpanzees choose to work together five times as often as they decide to compete – and the finding challenges the perception that chimps are overly competitive. It also suggests the roots of human cooperation may be shared with other primates.


To determine whether chimps possess the same ability humans have to overcome competition – an important ingredient in building a community – researchers from the Yerkes National Primate Research Centre at Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, set up a cooperative task that closely mimicked chimpanzee natural conditions.

They provided 11 great apes that with an open choice to select cooperation partners and work with them to pull at an apparatus filled with rewards.

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They also gave them myriad ways to compete with one another in a bid to collect the treats for themselves.

In half of the test sessions, two chimpanzees needed to participate to succeed, and in the other half, three chimpanzees were needed.


The study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found the chimpanzees overwhelmingly performed cooperative acts, despite being given ample opportunities for competition, aggression and 'freeloading'. In fact, they chose to work together 3,565 times across 94 hour-long test sessions.

The chimps used a variety of enforcement strategies to overcome competition, which the researchers measured in terms of attempted thefts of rewards.

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These strategies included the chimpanzees directly protesting against others, refusing to work in the presence of a freeloader, which supports avoidance as an important component in managing competitive tendencies, and more dominant chimpanzees intervening to help others against freeloaders.

Such third-party punishment occurred 14 times, primarily in response to aggression between the freeloader and the chimpanzee that was cooperatively working with others for the rewards.

"Previous statements in the literature describe human cooperation as a 'huge anomaly' and chimpanzees as preferring competition over collaboration," said lead study author Malini Suchak.


"Studies have also suggested researchers have to 'engineer cooperation' during experiments rather than acknowledging chimpanzees are naturally cooperative. When we considered chimpanzees' natural behaviours, we thought surely they must be able to manage competition on their own, so we gave them the freedom to employ their own enforcement strategies.



"It turns out, they are really quite good at preventing competition and favouring cooperation. In fact, given the ratio of conflict to cooperation is quite similar in humans and chimpanzees, our study shows striking similarities across species and gives another insight into human evolution."

Frans de Waal, director of the Living Links Centre at the Yerkes Research Centre, explained it has become a popular claim in the literature that human cooperation is unique: "This is especially curious because the best ideas we have about the evolution of cooperation come straight from animal studies,” he said.

“The natural world is full of cooperation, from ants to killer whales. Our study is the first to show that our closest relatives know very well how to discourage competition and freeloading. Cooperation wins!"