The subject of altruistic behavior amongst chimpanzees is one that we've addressed a few times in the past here at Nobel Intent. Traditional dogma has it that only humans are capable of acting altruistically, putting others' needs before one’s own, and that this is one of those abilities that separates man from other animals. As is often the case with arguments that attempt to elevate mankind above the other animals on the planet, recent research shows that’s not really true.

The most recent study, from a team at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, has analyzed the degree of altruistic behavior of both chimpanzees and young children. In one test, the chimpanzees or children were confronted with an unfamiliar human adult, who was trying to reach a stick through some bars, but the stick was just out of reach. In some cases the human adult would offer a food reward in exchange for help reaching the stick, but in other cases there was no benefit accrued for helping.

Despite this, both the human infants and the chimpanzees helped out the adult the majority of the times. The next series of tests put a price at helping the adult human; the chimpanzees had to climb up 2.5 meters onto a ledge to help, and the human infants had to get past a series of obstacles. Again, the chimpanzees showed the same degree of altruism as the human infants.

In a final set of experiments, designed to test whether chimpanzees would show altruistic behavior towards members of their own species, the subject chimpanzees were presented with a test where another chimpanzee was trying to get into a chamber containing food. The only way this chimpanzee could get the food was if the subject pulled a chain, opening the door to the chamber. In this case, the subject chimp received no reward at all, other than that hearty sense of self-satisfaction one gets from being a nice guy. As with the other experiments, the subject chimpanzees would help out another individual even if there was no benefit to themselves.

The research papers will be published this week in PLoS Biology; Warneken F, Hare B, Melis AP, Hanus D, Tomasello M (2007) Spontaneous altruism by chimpanzees and young children. PLoS Biol 5(7): e184. doi:10.1371/journal. pbio.0050184.