Animal cognition: Chimps fake laugh, sheep know taxonomy and pigeons better at stats then us

(thanks to Damien C for the link!)

From the NYTimes

Think You’re Smarter Than Animals? Maybe Not
By ALEXANDRA HOROWITZ and AMMON SHEA

Alexandra Horowitz is the author of “Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell and Know.” Ammon Shea is the author of “The Phone Book: The Curious History of the Book That Everyone Uses But No One Reads.”

HUMANS have long been fascinated with animal intelligence. Scientific studies have asked if animals use language or tools; have culture; can imitate, cooperate, empathize or deceive.

Inevitably, the results of these studies invite comparison with our own cognitive faculties. In such comparisons, humans nearly always come out on top. An impartial observer might suggest that the deck is stacked. After all, we are the ones running these tests.

But if we look at some of the subtler aspects of animal behavior, the beasts begin to offer surprisingly stiff competition. A few recent research papers describe animal competence at social and cognitive tasks that humans often struggle with — mastering conversational etiquette, understanding botanical classification, competing on game shows and figuring out how to get a drink when you’re thirsty and the only glass of water is glued to the table and your hands are tied behind your back.

“Aping Expressions? Chimpanzees Produce Distinct Laugh Types When Responding to Laughter of Others,” in the journal Emotion (2011).

You’re at a dinner party. Your hostess regales you with a long, meandering tale of her recent back surgery. It ends with attempted humor: she laughs and glances at you. You laugh in response, trying to convey an appreciation for her humor that you don’t actually feel. Congratulations: you are now at the level of social politeness of chimpanzees.

In this study, the laughs of 59 chimps (yes, they do laugh) were recorded and the sounds analyzed. The researchers discovered that when one chimp laughed others sometimes engaged in “laugh replications” that lacked the full acoustic structure of spontaneous laughter. In other words, they were fake-laughing.

This happened more often in more newly formed colonies, where, perhaps, the individuals were less familiar with one another. With your spouse of 25 years, you can simply stare at him stony-faced when he tells you his favorite “funny” story yet again.

“Do sheep (Ovis aries) categorize plant species according to botanical family?” in Animal Cognition (2011).

Type “Is the tom...” into Google, and the search engine, presuming that you are beset with the same burning question that has plagued so many, offers to finish your query for you: “Is the tomato a fruit or a vegetable?” Given that we humans are still puzzled by the botanical status of one of our most common vegetables, er, fruits, the performance of the 12 lambs described in this study is humbling.

After learning that eating sainfoin, but not fescue, was followed by a stomachache, the lambs knew to pick cocksfoot over alfalfa when given the choice in the future. Have no idea what this means? In non-lamb terms, if a pasture legume caused indigestion (thanks to lithium chloride added by the researchers) but a grass found in pastures did not, the lambs, when facing a later choice between a different legume and a different grass, opted for the grass over the legume. In other words, the lambs demonstrated an ability to form a generalization about the relative digestibility of families of plants. (Lest sheep let these findings go to their heads, note that recent research found that some plants communicate with each other to raise defenses against herbivores.)

“Are Birds Smarter Than Mathematicians? Pigeons (Columba livia) Perform Optimally on a Version of the Monty Hall Dilemma,” in the Journal of Comparative Psychology (2010).

The old game show “Let’s Make a Deal” inspired a famous probability puzzle. A contestant has three doors to choose from: one hides a spectacular prize; the other two each hide something considered undesirable, like a goat. Once the contestant makes a choice, the host, Monty Hall, reveals a goat behind one of the unchosen doors, and offers the contestant the chance to switch his choice to the third door.

On the show, few people switched. But famously, probability shows that it is much better to switch. We humans are reluctant to accept this: in laboratory studies, subjects switch only a third of the time. We perform only slightly better if we get a chance to play the game dozens of times or if the probability is explained to us beforehand.

But pigeons that were offered a version of Monty Hall’s choice aced the test. The experiment involved pecking keys and winning “mixed grain,” instead of selecting doors hiding unknown prizes. After training in the game, the pigeons switched 96 percent of the time. The lesson? Take a pigeon with you if you’re going to be on this game show (now back on television).

“Rooks Use Stones to Raise the Water Level to Reach a Floating Worm,” in Current Biology (2009).

One of Aesop’s fables tells the tale of a crow who quenches his thirst by filling a nearly empty pitcher with stones until the water level rises high enough to drink. Displacement is an insightful solution — could a bird really come up with it? After all, one can easily imagine humans failing to do so (say, reality-show contestants who, faced with an immobile glass and a “no hands” rule, contort themselves futilely).

In this study, four rooks (a type of bird) faced an Aesopian task: confronted with a vial partly filled with water and holding a floating worm, could they extract this bounty?

Easy. After considering the problem, they collected and dropped into the tube just enough stones to bring the worm within snatching distance. Look for this challenge to be included in the next season of “Fear Factor.”

There is no need to be either frightened or overly excited by these findings. The animals won’t be taking over anytime soon, and there is very little chance you can train your parrot to help your child get into the right kindergarten (even animal cognition has its limits). And there is still one notable area of behavior in which animals have shown no sign of matching us: they appear to be not at all interested in running experiments testing our cognition.

Smart animals.

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References

Davila-Ross M, Allcock B, Thomas C, Bard KA (2011) Aping Expressions? Chimpanzees Produce Distinct Laugh Types When Responding to Laughter of Others. Emotion DOI: 10.1037/a0022594

Abstract
Humans have the ability to replicate the emotional expressions of others even when they undergo different emotions. Such distinct responses of expressions, especially positive expressions, play a central role in everyday social communication of humans and may give the responding individuals important advantages in cooperation and communication. The present work examined laughter in chimpanzees to test whether nonhuman primates also use their expressions in such distinct ways. The approach was first to examine the form and occurrence of laugh replications (laughter after the laughter of others) and spontaneous laughter of chimpanzees during social play and then to test whether their laugh replications represented laugh-elicited laugh responses (laughter triggered by the laughter of others) by using a quantitative method designed to measure responses in natural social settings. The results of this study indicated that chimpanzees produce laugh-elicited laughter that is distinct in form and occurrence from their spontaneous laughter. These findings provide the first empirical evidence that nonhuman primates have the ability to replicate the expressions of others by producing expressions that differ in their underlying emotions and social implications. The data further showed that the laugh-elicited laugh responses of the subjects were closely linked to play maintenance, suggesting that chimpanzees might gain important cooperative and communicative advantages by responding with laughter to the laughter of their social partners. Notably, some chimpanzee groups of this study responded more with laughter than others, an outcome that provides empirical support of a socialization of expressions in great apes similar to that of humans.

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Ginane C, Dumont B (2011) Do sheep (Ovis aries) categorize plant species according to botanical family? ANIMAL COGNITION 14(3): 369-376, DOI: 10.1007/s10071-010-0371-4

Abstract
The ability of grazing herbivores to assign food types to categories by relying on certain relevant criteria could considerably reduce cognitive demand and increase their foraging efficiency when selecting among many different plant items. Grasses and legumes differ functionally in vegetation communities as well as in nutritive value. We aimed to determine whether sheep can generalize an aversion they learnt for a grass or a legume species to another species of the same functional type and consequently whether botanical family is a potential level of categorization. Over four successive weeks, 12 lambs were conditioned against either a freshly cut grass (tall fescue—Festuca arundinacea, N = 6) or legume species (sainfoin—Onobrychis viciifolia, N = 6) using a negative post-ingestive stimulus (lithium chloride) on day 1. Preference of all lambs between another grass (cocksfoot—Dactylis glomerata) and another legume (alfalfa—Medicago sativa) was assessed on day 3 by measuring their relative consumptions. Preference for alfalfa progressively became lower for lambs that were conditioned against sainfoin than against tall fescue, indicating that lambs generalized the aversion between species along some perceptual gradient and classed the considered grasses and legumes in distinct categories. Beyond this original result, the question now is to identify which specific plant characteristics or functional traits the animals rely on in order to form categories.

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Herbranson WT, Schroeder J (2010) Are birds smarter than mathematicians? Pigeons (Columba livia) perform optimally on a version of the Monty Hall Dilemma. Journal of Comparative Psychology, 124(1): 1-13. doi: 10.1037/a0017703

Abstract
The “Monty Hall Dilemma” (MHD) is a well known probability puzzle in which a player tries to guess which of three doors conceals a desirable prize. After an initial choice is made, one of the remaining doors is opened, revealing no prize. The player is then given the option of staying with their initial guess or switching to the other unopened door. Most people opt to stay with their initial guess, despite the fact that switching doubles the probability of winning. A series of experiments investigated whether pigeons (Columba livia), like most humans, would fail to maximize their expected winnings in a version of the MHD. Birds completed multiple trials of a standard MHD, with the three response keys in an operant chamber serving as the three doors and access to mixed grain as the prize. Across experiments, the probability of gaining reinforcement for switching and staying was manipulated, and birds adjusted their probability of switching and staying to approximate the optimal strategy. Replication of the procedure with human participants showed that humans failed to adopt optimal strategies, even with extensive training

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Bird CD and Emery NJ (2009) Rooks Use Stones to Raise the Water Level to Reach a Floating Worm. Current Biology 19(16): 1410-1414 doi:10.1016/j.cub.2009.07.033

Abstract
In Aesop's fable “The Crow and the Pitcher,” a thirsty crow uses stones to raise the level of water in a pitcher and quench its thirst. A number of corvids have been found to use tools in the wild [1,2,3,4], and New Caledonian crows appear to understand the functional properties of tools and solve complex physical problems via causal and analogical reasoning [5,6,7,8,9,10,11]. The rook, another member of the corvid family that does not appear to use tools in the wild, also appears able to solve non-tool-related problems via similar reasoning [12]. Here, we present evidence that captive rooks are also able to solve a complex problem by using tools. We presented four captive rooks with a problem analogous to Aesop's fable: raising the level of water so that a floating worm moved into reach. All four subjects solved the problem with an appreciation of precisely how many stones were needed. Three subjects also rapidly learned to use large stones over small ones, and that sawdust cannot be manipulated in the same manner as water. This behavior demonstrates a flexible ability to use tools, a finding with implications for the evolution of tool use and cognition in animals.

*updated*: Family Dog Rescues 6-Year-Old Girl from River Drowning

updated august 19th 2011 - read the comment below, i totally fell for this one, my BS detector was on extremely low....


from the Morton Report via 27b/6

by Holly Thorne

On August 17, Tom and Marie Morgan of Ridgefield, Washington were walking along the edge of a tributary of the Lewis River with their six year-old daughter Taylor and family dog Maggie. The river was in full flow due to recent heavy rains. As Taylor ran forward to throw a rock into the river, the bank collapsed and, falling into the rushing torrent, Taylor was quickly swept away.

"I couldn't keep up with her," said her father, "the water was too quick." I was running as fast as I could along the edge when Maggie bolted past me for about 30 yards and then leaped into the river. I lost sight of both of them for a second and then I saw Maggie with Taylor's jacket collar in her mouth trying to swim towards the bank. The river took them down about another hundred yards before Maggie was able to reach the bank. Even though they went under a few times she didn't let go once. If it hadn't been for Maggie, we would have lost our daughter."

An eyewitness who was jogging nearby when the incident happened said, "The dog sprinted and jumped about 12 feet out into the river just in front of the child. They both went under and when they came up the dog had her jacket in its mouth and was dragging her to the bank. The dad ran into the water's edge and grabbed the other side of the child's jacket and they both dragged her up onto the grass. I have never seen anything like it."

Sergeant Michael Brodie of the local police department said that in twenty years on the force he had not seen anything like it either.

"I have never heard of a dog jumping into a river to save a child before. The family is very lucky to own a dog with this degree of devotion. When I took the report at the family's home, the dog sat there looking back and forth between me and Taylor and I could sense something extremely unusual between them."

Taylor's father Tom says that it is not the first time Maggie has displayed an unusual degree of devotion towards Taylor.

"Maggie never lets her out of her sight. About two years ago she rushed into the house, breaking the screen, barking as if she had gone crazy. She is usually very gentle and quiet. When my wife and I rushed to see what was happening she ran out into the yard where we found Taylor lying on the grass having trouble breathing. She had been stung on the neck and is highly allergic to bees."

Maggie has been a member of the family since Taylor was just two years old. "We visited an animal shelter and were walking down a row of cages and all the other dogs were either barking or running around but one was just sitting quietly in the middle of its cage as if waiting and Taylor stopped and said, "Hello Maggie, we're taking you home."

The parents don't know where Taylor got the name from but said it just stuck. "We have always known there was an unusual bond between them. When Taylor was younger and first walking, Maggie would move toys out of her path and always sleeps just outside her bedroom door as if on guard."

When asked about her river rescue, Taylor responded "Maggie loves me."

Today, the Morgan family received notice that Maggie has been nominated for a Commendation of Bravery by the police department. Unfortunately, the medal may be given posthumously.

"We found out last month that Maggie has been diagnosed with Hemangiosarcoma cancer and will not be with us in a few months; we haven't told Taylor yet as she will be devastated. It will be the hardest thing we have ever had to do. The two have an inseparable bond that is based on real love. We owe our daughter's life to her.

Gap between field and lab observations of chimps narrowing: chimps share.

Thanks to Geraldine F for the link!

From NYTimes
Chimpanzees Clear Some Doubt After Generosity Is Questioned
By CARL ZIMMER
When it comes to the evolution of humans, a lot depended on the kindness of strangers.

Our species is especially cooperative. We routinely help other people — relatives and strangers alike — even when there’s no immediate reward for us. The concern that humans have for each other is part of the foundation of complex societies, from neighborhoods to nations.

Scientists have long wondered how long ago our so-called prosocial behavior evolved. In a new paper published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team of scientists at Emory University addresses that question with a study on chimpanzees, one of our closest living relatives. Contrary to some earlier laboratory tests, the Emory researchers concluded that chimpanzees are indeed willing to do favors for others. Our prosocial behavior may therefore date back at least several million years.

“These new results suggest chimpanzees may help others proactively simply because they understand they need help,” said Brian Hare, an anthropologist at Duke University.

The Emory researchers decided to undertake the study because of a contradiction in the scientific literature. Some lab experiments on chimpanzees failed to show a willingness to help, but primatologists who observed chimpanzees in the wild saw many examples of what looked like helping. “They’re sharing food, they’re helping each other in fights — there was a huge mismatch between what was going on in the field and in the lab,” said Victoria Horner, the lead author of the study.

Dr. Horner and her colleagues suspected that the design of earlier lab studies had been too complex for the chimpanzees to figure out. “It seemed to us that the chimps didn’t understand what was going on,” said Dr. Horner.

They set up what they believed was a much simpler experiment. For an earlier study, they had trained captive chimpanzees to give them colored tokens in exchange for food. For the current study, they used those tokens to give seven female chimpanzees a chance to help out fellow chimps.

In each trial a pair of chimpanzees sat next to each other, able to see each other in adjoining cages. They were given 30 tokens, half in one color and half in another. If a chimp gave the scientists a token of one color, she got a package of food while her partner got none. If she gave the other color, both of them got something to eat.

If chimpanzees didn’t care about the welfare of other chimpanzees, the scientists predicted, they’d pick both colors equally often. That’s not what happened. All of the chimpanzees were more likely to pick the generous color, up to 66.7 percent of the time. They showed no preference for their relatives versus unrelated chimps. The scientists also ran control sessions, in which the chimpanzees got food only for themselves, no matter which color they chose. In these control sessions, they had no bias in their choice of colors.

“This now fits with the evidence we know from the wild,” Dr. Horner said.

She speculates that human helping evolved from the kind of bias she and her colleagues see in chimpanzees, as the probability of helping rose in our ancestors. “It’s not that we have a unique ability, but it’s the number of instances of when we do it is vastly different,” she said.

Several experts gave Dr. Horner and her colleagues high marks. “They have been able for the first time to duplicate what field researchers already knew was a natural ability of chimpanzees,” said Christophe Boesch, a primatologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany.

But Michael Tomasello, also at the Max Planck Institute, found the study poorly designed. “The results are uninterpretable,” he said. He notes that the Emory scientists ran their control sessions after the experimental sessions. “Maybe the chimpanzees were just tired of choosing the two-pieces-of-food option by the time the control conditions were run,” Dr. Tomasello said.

Dr. Tomasello and his colleagues have published their own experiments on prosocial behavior in chimps, most recently in July in the journal Nature. His own research leads Dr. Tomasello to a somewhat different conclusion from Dr. Horner’s. “Chimps help others, but what they do not do is give up food themselves so others can have it,” he said. “So they are prosocial when it is not costly, but when it is, not so much.”

India tiger adopts orphaned cubs

India male tiger plays doting dad to orphaned cubs
By Geeta Pandey
From BBC

Thanks to Geraldine F for the link!

Forest officials in northern India say a male tiger appears to be caring for two orphaned cubs in an extremely rare display of paternal feeling.

The cubs lost their mother in February in the Ranthambore tiger reserve. Officials there say they believe the male tiger, named T25, is their father.

Wildlife experts say cubs are usually raised by their mothers and male tigers often kill cubs they come across.

Officials believe there is no recorded evidence of males behaving like this.

Photographs taken by hidden cameras in the forest reserve in India's northern Rajasthan state have documented the tiger's behaviour. The most recent images show the male tiger walking just a metre behind one of the cubs, Ranthambore field director Rajesh Gupta told the BBC.

The cubs, who are believed to be about eight months old now, were first seen on 29 January with their mother T5, a forest official in Ranthambore told the BBC.

He said after the tigress died on 9 February, the cubs were being reared in the wild by forest department staff.

The cubs are too young to make a kill on their own and are being provided with bait by forest staff.

"During my visit to the park on Monday 30 May, I was standing on the top of a cliff and I saw one of the cubs down below eating the kill," Mr Gupta says.

"It is seen in good health," he said. It appears as if the male tiger is allowing the cubs to eat their kill and not taking it for himself."
Cubs as food

"It's very unusual," UM Sahai, Rajasthan's Chief Wildlife Warden, told the BBC from the state capital, Jaipur.

"Normally the tigress keeps an eye on the cubs while the father is a visitor, who is seen off and on, especially when he comes to mate with the tigress," he said.

Wildlife experts say that it is common for male tigers to never even set eyes upon the cubs they father - especially when the mother is not present and many male tigers will simply see cubs as food.

Ranthambore, one of India's best known tiger parks, has about 40 tigers, including about a dozen cubs.

According to the latest tiger census figures released in March, India has 1,706 of the big cats.

The country had 100,000 tigers at the turn of the last century but there has been a serious decline in numbers since then.

Experts say that 97% of tigers have been lost to poaching and shrinking habitats.

Supercooperators: The mathematics of evolution, altruism and human behaviour

From RSA

Evolutionary biologist Martin Nowak and author Roger Highfield explain how cooperation and altruism fit into the larger evolutionary puzzle. Chaired by Jonathan Rowson.

Bonobos!

So much happened yesterday and I was all tied up so lots of posts today - visit the facebook page or the blog to make sure you didn't miss anything. First up, a double post on bonobos, a quick book review and a new movie. Have a great weekend everyone- MA


I FINALLY found time to read Vanessa Wood's book "bonobo handshake" a few weeks ago. I posted about the book and Vanessa and Brian Hare's work with bonobos HERE and HERE and knowing Vanessa and her hysterical yet informative writing style I knew I would love it. I am so happy to say that the book is AMAZING! Anyone who has worked in a developing and war-torn country I am sure will really enjoy it. Its not only about bonobos, research and conservation as you might expect. Vanessa writes about the doubts and fears a "city girl" experiences working under these conditions. Its about love and relationships and there is also the perfect amount of information on the history of conflict in DRC and its neighbouring countries. The book is beyond charming and I cannot recommend it enough. I am sure anyone who reads this blog would really enjoy it. - MA

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“Bonobos” will hit french cinema screens on the 6th of April 2011
From the Lola Ya bonobo blog on wildlife direct
Alain Tixier and his team came back to Lola to shoot the last sequences for the cinema documentary film “BONOBOS”. The adventure started over two years ago and the film will finally be released on the big screen next spring… in 3D! A few more pics can be seen on the blog

'Altruism Gene' Associated With Higher Willingness to Donate

From Science Daily

Do you like to do good things for other people? If so, your genes might be responsible for this. At least, the results of a study conducted by researchers of the University of Bonn suggest this. According to the study, a minute change in a particular gene is associated with a significantly higher willingness to donate. People with this change gave twice as much money on average to a charitable cause as did other study subjects. The results have now been published in the journal Social Cognitive & Affective Neuroscience.

The researchers working with the psychologist Professor Dr. Martin Reuter invited their students to take a "retention test": The roughly 100 participants were to memorize series of numbers and then repeat them as correctly as possible. They received the sum of five Euros for doing this. Afterwards, they could either take their hard-earned money home or donate any portion of it to a charitable cause. This decision was made freely and in apparent anonymity. "However, we always knew how much money was in the cash box beforehand and could therefore calculate the amount donated," explains Reuter.

The scientists had asked their study subjects to undergo a cheek swab beforehand. They were able to extract DNA for genetic analyses from the cells thus sampled. In these analyses, they focused on one gene, the so-called COMT gene. It contains the building instructions for an enzyme which inactivates certain messengers in the brain. The most well-known of these messengers is dopamine.

It has been known for nearly 15 years that there are two different variants of the COMT gene: COMT-Val and COMT-Met. Both versions, which occur in the population with approximately equal frequency, differ in only a single building block. In the case of people with the COMT-Val variant, the associated enzyme works up to four times more effectively. Thus considerably more dopamine is inactivated in the brain of a person with this variant.

Mini-Mutation Affects Behavior
This mini-mutation also has effects on behavior: "Students with the COMT-Val gene donated twice as much money on average as did fellow students with the COMT-Met variant," explains Reuter. This is the first time that researchers have been able to establish a connection between a particular gene and altruistic deeds. However, it was already known from studies on twins that altruistic behavior is also partly influenced by our genes.

There is a good reason why the Bonn scientists focused their analysis on the COMT gene: For several years, it has been known that dopamine is involved in controlling social behavior in animals and humans. Thus the messenger, together with substances such as the neuropeptide vasopressin, influences sexuality and bonding. In addition, dopamine is linked with positive emotionality. Even the characteristic of being motivated by stimuli is controlled by this important neurotransmitter.

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REFERENCE
M. Reuter, C. Frenzel, N. T. Walter, S. Markett, C. Montag. Investigating the genetic basis of altruism: the role of the COMT Val158Met polymorphism. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 2010; DOI: 10.1093/scan/nsq083

ABSTRACT
Findings from twin studies yield heritability estimates of 0.50 for prosocial behaviours like empathy, cooperativeness and altruism. First molecular genetic studies underline the influence of polymorphisms located on genes coding for the receptors of the neuropeptides, oxytocin and vasopressin. However, the proportion of variance explained by these gene loci is rather low indicating that additional genetic variants must be involved. Pharmacological studies show that the dopaminergic system interacts with oxytocin and vasopressin. The present experimental study tests a dopaminergic candidate polymorphism for altruistic behaviour, the functional COMT Val158Met SNP. N  = 101 healthy Caucasian subjects participated in the study. Altruism was assessed by the amount of money donated to a poor child in a developing country, after having earned money by participating in two straining computer experiments. Construct validity of the experimental data was given: the highest correlation between the amount of donations and personality was observed for cooperativeness (r = 0.32, P ≤ 0.001). Carriers of at least one Val allele donated about twice as much money as compared with those participants without a Val allele (P = 0.01). Cooperativeness and the Val allele of COMT additively explained 14.6% of the variance in donation behaviour. Results indicate that the Val allele representing strong catabolism of dopamine is related to altruism.

Selected: Why some lead, others follow and why it matters

New Scientist also has a write up on the book "The natural selection of leaders"

Altruistic tortoise is altruistic

from the Huffington Post - thanks to Jen F for the link!

Clever critters: Bonobos that share, brainy bugs and social dogs

Dr. Brian Hare and Tassie doing some serious science

From Scientific American
By FERRIS JABR

When it comes to brain power, we humans like to think we're the animal kingdom's undisputed champions. But in the past few decades we've had to make a lot of room on our mantle place for shared trophies. Problem-solving? Sorry, but crows and octopuses do that too. Tool use? Primates, birds and even fish have learned that trick. It turns out our human cognitive abilities are just not as unique as we once thought.

The collapsing divisions between animal and human minds is exactly what a group of scientists gathered to discuss on Saturday, June 5, at a World Science Festival panel, "All Creatures Great and Smart." WNYC radio host Jad Abumrad mediated the talk.

The first topic of conversation was a behavior known as altruism: selflessly helping a stranger. Brian Hare, who studies ape psychology at Duke University, described a recent experiment on this kind of cooperation in bonobos—primates that are in the same genus as chimpanzees.

"We wanted to challenge that notion that humans are unique and test whether one of our closest relatives is capable of voluntarily sharing," Hare said. In the study, published earlier this year in Current Biology, researchers showed a bonobo into a room with some food inside. Instead of hogging all the grub, the bonobo consistently chose to unlock the door of an adjacent room and share the food with an unfamiliar bonobo.

The exact intentions behind this altruistic behavior remain unclear. Bonobos could expect a stranger to return the favor in the future, or "they could just be saying, 'You know what? I just want to go on a blind date,'" said Hare.

But "the smartest thing about bonobos is that they live in a society with very little violence," said Vanessa Woods, a science communicator and researcher at Duke, who is married to Hare. Woods explained how close-knit groups of females work together to keep the peace in bonobo societies, recounting an incident in which five unrelated female bonobos chased down a male bonobo who slapped another female for no reason. "One male can be stronger than one female, but no male is stronger than five females," Woods said.

"I try to stay good friends with all her girlfriends," Hare said of his wife, in a joking aside.

Altruism, sharing and cooperation aren't the only sophisticated behaviors animals demonstrate, the panelists explained. Klaus Zuberbühler, who studies the cognitive abilities of non-human primates, has found the rudiments of language in certain monkeys. Vervet and Diana monkeys, for example, have different alarm calls for different predators, reacting in the most appropriate way to signs of a leopard, eagle or snake. What recently astonished researchers is that monkeys aren't the only ones eavesdropping on each other—birds listen for the distinct calls as well.

Yellow-casqued hornbills—tropical birds that sport dusty orange mohawks—always perk up when Diana monkeys sound the eagle alarm, since eagles are a common enemy. But hornbills don't react to the Diana’s leopard alarm calls, because leopards usually can't catch the high-flying birds.

After so much talk about clever monkeys and apes, the panel switched their focus to a group of critters most people don't associate with intelligence: bugs.

"Insects can accomplish some very sophisticated things without big brains," said Jeremy Niven, an insect neuroscientist at the University of Cambridge. "It kind of makes you wonder why you need an extra billion neurons to be able to do something that a human does."

A slow-motion video of locusts traversing a horizontal ladder made of cocktail sticks played behind the panel. Niven explained how his recent studies show that locusts, despite their tiny brains, use their vision to control their swift leg movements with incredible precision, never missing a rung of the ladder even when the gaps between rungs are inconsistent between trial runs.

For a laugh, Niven also highlighted footage from an experiment designed to shed light on whether bees have aesthetic sensibilities. In the end, all the study showed is that bees prefer Van Gogh's Sunflowers to more classical flower portraits and to other colorful but flowerless paintings. "It's not really science," Niven said, chuckling, "but it's interesting nonetheless."

The panel discussion concluded with a dog show—a mini-parade of canine intelligence.

To set up the show, Hare explained that although many animals can think and make decisions, questions remain about whether animals can interpret the thoughts of others—an ability called "theory of mind" that humans develop by age three or four. One way to test this is to ask whether animals understand the same kinds of social cues human infants learn to recognize—like voice, gesture and gaze.

Sammy, a small white dog reminiscent of Toto from The Wizard of Oz, trotted on stage with his helper. Hare hid a piece of cheese in one of two tall bowls and pointed to the bowl containing the tempting morsel. Sammy immediately followed his direction.

"Are we sure Sammy isn't smelling the food?" Abumrad asked.

Hare tried the experiment again, but didn't point at any bowl this time. Sammy tried the wrong bowl and then wandered the stage. "When he doesn't have a social cue, he goes to the wrong place," Hare said. "We've found that dogs are incredibly good at this. They don't use olfactory cues—they would much prefer that you help them."

It's especially interesting that dogs are so good at taking social direction because chimpanzees, in contrast, rarely understand the same cues in the same kind of test. The chimps just don't get it.

In some ways, neither do we. As the panel demonstrated, animal minds are wrapped in many mysterious layers that we're only beginning to unravel.

Interpsecies cuddling or possibly a confused leopard playing with its food...

Thanks to Claudio T for the link

Red squirrels adopt young of relatives

From Africa Geographic via their facebook page
Red squirrels found adopting young of relatives

At first glance, this picture of a red squirrel tenderly cradling a baby seem incredibly touching, but according to research in Canada this is more about survival than altruism.

University of Alberta’s Jamieson Gorrell had been watching a red squirrel population in Yukon when he came across a female that had adopted a newborn squirrel abandoned by its biological mother.

The adoptive mother had taken the baby from its nest back to another in a nearby tree where she then cared for it.

Squirrels are among the most solitary animals, having little to do with one another, so the adoption of a foundling struck Gorrell as an anomaly. But while checking through nearly 20 years of research gathered by the university on the squirrel population, he made a breatkthrough discovery.

On four other occasions, over the life of the study, female red squirrels had adopted abandoned baby squirrels and, in every case, Gorrell found that the foundling was related to its adoptive mother.

Unlike social animals such as chimpanzees, the solitary, anti-social squirrels were able to identify kinship without making contact with one another.

The researchers think that before the biological mother disappeared the adoptive mother to be, recognized a genetic link between them. Gorrell’s team theorized that the constant vocalizing *or* chattering a squirrel uses to mark its territory and ward of intruders contains signals describing its genetic history. The adopting mother knew the biological mother was family and after it disappeared she recognized her genetic connection to the abandoned baby.

This research is significant because it proves a long-accepted theory of evolutionary biology is correct for a solitary, non-social animal. Hamilton’s Rule, dating back to 1963, explains that despite the so-called law of the jungle and survival of the fittest, altruistic behavior can exist. But this altruism is restricted to family members only.

Female red squirrels will only adopt an abandoned baby it shares common genes with and will pick only one lucky squirrel from an entire litter.

Gorrell says that having an extra family member helps the adopting mother ensure a continuation of the gene pool. But adopting more than one would be out of the question because the costs to the adoptive mother and her own biological offspring outweights any potential benefit.

More on the Fongoli chimps and Dr. Jill Preutz

Telling the chimps' stories
From the Des Moines Register
By MIKE KILEN

Jill Pruetz often sleeps in the field, waking to African savanna noises and the sight of chimpanzees she has studied for nine years. When Pruetz returns to Ames, she leaves her soft bed to sleep on a cot on the porch. "I can't sleep but I'm exhausted," she says, drumming her fingers on the arm of her office chair at Iowa State University. "I'm antsy." One of those fingers on her left hand - an empty ring finger - is half missing, bitten off by a captive chimp years ago.

The research takes great personal sacrifice. Pruetz often loses 30 to 40 pounds in the savanna, walking great distances and observing up to 16 hours each day. She has had malaria nine times, once so severe she could only crawl. She rarely sees her boyfriend, Thomas LaDuke, a herpetologist from Pennsylvania. "My work defines my life to a great extent. For better or worse, it takes up almost all of my time and much of my energy," Pruetz says.

Pruetz is an anthropology professor at ISU but her heart is with the chimps, a species much more closely tied to humans than any other. The highlight of her life was saving an infant chimp last year. The highlight of her professional life was the first observation of chimps using tools to hunt, a finding that circled the globe two years ago. She is the "most widely talked about" chimp researcher since Jane Goodall, wrote National Geographic Magazine two years ago. In April, Pruetz was featured in a National Geographic Channel documentary which will air again later in the year. "Anyone that is mentioned in the same breath as Jane Goodall will acknowledge there can never be another Jane Goodall," Pruetz says, calling Goodall's 1986 book on chimpanzee behavior the best. "I find it incredibly flattering."

When Pruetz is back in Iowa, she thinks about the chimps. Flanking her computer is a large cutout of a chimp she named Frito, one of the group of 30 she studies in Fongoli, Senegal. A cartoon bubble juts from his mouth with the words "Thinking of you." She fears he may be dead. The word has come from research assistants in Senegal. "Having a chimp die that I really care about is depressing and makes me want to distance myself from my chimp subjects," she says. "But I eventually move on."

The National Geographic Society has awarded her five grants for the study primarily because of her skills as a scientist, said John Francis, its vice president of research. "But if you can tell a good story about it afterwards," he adds, "that is icing on the cake." And Pruetz has some stories.

The night before she returned to Iowa this spring, she slept in the field and dreamed of a dog biting her leg. She awoke fearing it was hyenas. The work has numerous potential dangers. Chimps are five times as strong as humans and if they knew it, she would be in trouble. Pruetz observes from just 30 feet away, close enough to be near the group but far enough to not intervene. Recently, a new alpha male in the group was in the midst of a display to show his dominance. A display involves loud calls and frightening faces, dragging around branches and generally scaring the others. He turned to Pruetz. She thought, it couldn't be that bad. "But when he displayed at me, holy wow, that was scary," she said. "I felt like I should act frightened just because he deserved it. You can't do that, so I just stayed silent."

Yet she is fiercely protective of the chimps, declining in numbers like other great apes worldwide. "It is her life," said her mother, Dorothy Pruetz, from Yoakum, Texas. "The chimps have become her family." Pruetz grew up in Texas, was reading by age 3 and became the first in her family to graduate from college. She also ran track at Texas State. "You never told Jill Pruetz what to do. She would tell you what she was going to do, and you better watch out," her mother said.

The sinewy professor looks younger than her years and talks like an excited undergrad about the first time she saw a great ape after studying the blank stares of monkeys. It looked at her with a kind of understanding in its eyes. She was hooked. Pruetz was awarded grants to study a group of savanna chimps in Senegal in 2001, three months before she joined the ISU staff. The chimps live mostly on the ground, unlike chimps elsewhere, and are hard to study, ranging in a wide area. She would catch a glimpse and not see them for 10 days. Pruetz figured it would take 10 years just to "habituate," or get the chimps used to her presence without scurrying. It took only four years. "I wore them down," she said. "I knew I could because I never give up." The male-dominated culture in Senegal, where men and women eat separately and afternoon teas last three hours, was at first difficult. Pruetz prefers the field in constant 100-degree temperatures to the mud hut home and drop toilet shared with other villagers. The amazing things happening in the field, especially one day in 2006, explain why.

A female chimp named Tumbo sharpened a branch and wielded it like a spear. "What is going on?" Pruetz thought then. "What is she going to do with it?" Tumbo used it to stab a bush baby, a small, tree-dwelling primate. She was hunting. Over 17 days, Pruetz saw them hunt bush babies 13 times, followed by more occurrences in 2007. She recorded it in dozens of waterproof journals that line her office. This link to human behavior fascinated lay people and earned immediate reaction in the science community. Critics surfaced who didn't think the sample was large enough. Others thought chimps couldn't do such a thing. Since then, she has documented 90 uses of hunting tools among the chimps. Pruetz shrugged it off as the nature of science. The disagreements also made a good story for the media. Her name was suddenly everywhere. But the more she watched the chimps, the more her interest changed to their social behavior. And that is her best story.

While back at Iowa State in January 2009, she got a call from a research assistant in Africa. A hunter had gathered one of the baby chimps she had named Aimee and was trying to sell it. Pruetz used money from teaching an online course, bought a $1,400 plane ticket and flew to Africa. They convinced the hunter to give Aimee back, tended to the wounded chimp and gently placed her out in the field. Pruetz was scared of aggression by males or that the mother had been killed, as typically happens when a baby is taken. Then they saw an orphan adolescent male named Mike approach. He paced around Aimee and sniffed. Then he scooped her up and took her back to Aimee's pant-grunt greetings to the others. The mother had been injured so Mike carried Aimee around for two days before she came to her baby. Aimee would live. And Pruetz had recorded another rarity, altruistic behavior from an unrelated adolescent male. "Seeing that infant reunited with her mother was more fulfilling than anything I have done before," Pruetz said. "I can't imagine anything being more fulfilling than that moment." She knew questions would arise from researchers about intervening with subjects and from students about the dangers of anthropomorphizing. In the interview on National Geographic Television, she had to pause to cry when talking of Aimee. "We all struggle with it. But what I tell students is, try to be objective but acknowledge that we all have our favorites," she said. When she speaks of Aimee or Frito, there is a catch in her voice.

So conservation has become a more important subject to Pruetz. She says these chimps may not be around in 20 years. Iron and gold miners are moving in. She is also working on a paper on altruism among the chimps as her interest grows in the emotional similarities to humans, raising questions on how we define and separate ourselves from animals. Pruetz says she will likely do this work forever, despite creaking knees from years of running and the long separations from family and friends. "It's so amazingly peaceful," she says. "I'm glad to come home, but I can't wait to go back."

Related link: Must See! - Dr. Preutz reintroduces captured chimp back into Fongoli research group

Must See! - Dr. Preutz reintroduces captured chimp back into Fongoli research group

from National Geographic:
This story began last Sunday when Jill Pruetz, an anthropologist at Iowa State University, sent out a frantic email: "I just got a phone call from Johnny, my field assistant in Senegal, who told me he thinks that an infant chimp from the Fongoli community was taken by people near the southern end of the range," she wrote.

The initial report was that the baby had been found by two men who had been out hunting when their dogs startled a group of chimpanzees. The apes fled, leaving the baby behind, according to their story.

Pruetz jumped into action. She consulted Janis Carter, who has worked with sanctuary chimps for years in the Gambia and also has ongoing conservation projects in Guinea and Senegal, and then briefly with a vet at Iowa State University about topical medicines for the baby chimp's scrapes and eye injuries.

Then she jumped on a plane to Senegal. We didn't hear from Pruetz again until today, when she emailed the good news that the baby chimp was reunited successfully with its mother.

The Fongoli chimps -- named after a river that runs through their range -- were made media stars by Pruetz.

In 2007 she and colleagues reported that, for the first time, great apes -- the Fongoli chimps in Senegal -- had been observed making and using tools to hunt mammals. The research was funded in part by the National Geographic Society and was featured in National Geographic Magazine and in a NOVA/National Geographic Television documentary.

Also in 2007, Pruetz reported that the Fongoli chimpanzees take shelter from the scorching heat in caves. "The discovery has raised chatter among primate researchers, who say it's the first known case of regular cave use by an ape species," National Geographic News reported.

In recognition of her pioneering work, Pruetz was named a National Geographic Emerging Explorer last year.

So when Pruetz sent out her urgent email on Sunday, many people were naturally concerned.

She gave me permission to run her email of today on my blog -- and I can think of no better way to relate the story than in her own words.

From Jill Pruetz in Senegal, West Africa, January 29, 2009:

I am happy to give you the wonderful news that baby has been delivered back to mom. It turns out that the infant was Aimee, Tia's first baby.

Tia is one of the top bushbaby hunters at Fongoli too. Aimee is only nine months old, so wouldn't have been able to survive in the group if Tia had been killed.

Briefly, I arrived in Kedougou Tuesday night just before midnight and slept in the hut next to the baby's cage. She vocalized a few times during the night and I tried to reciprocate, which worked I think, as she slept a little while every time, but I stayed awake for hours, of course, worrying about her!

She went to sleep finally, and Johnny and I left the next morning at 5am to go out to try and find chimps. He had stayed in Kedougou with the baby, as he was afraid to leave her in [the] charge of others there -- which is a good thing given she is so young and would normally nurse maybe once an hour.

But we didn't know exactly where the chimps were -- although we had a general idea given what Michel, my other field assistant, told us of their ranging habits of late.

Johnny and I went out and found a large party of about 15, with a female with no infant (all but one of the females in our group carry infants currently). It was Tia, and she was wounded, as the guys had described.

Johnny stayed with the chimps and I literally jogged back to camp and carried the baby out -- the chimps were about 2 kilometers from camp.

My other field assistant Michel carried my gear and I carried Aimee. We put her in a sack when we got close to the chimps because we wanted to leave her and move away so the chimps wouldn't see us with the baby -- we were afraid they would attack us upon seeing we had the baby.

The baby was so small and understandably confused, though, that she didn't vocalize when she heard the chimps, so we ended up all three walking together with the bag to within about 30 feet of the chimp party feeding in a fig tree. We put the bag down and opened it and backed away about 25 feet.

Mike, an adolescent whose own mother disappeared soon after he was weaned, came down and approached the baby, who just sat in the sack and looked from us to the chimps. He looked at her and smelled her and then picked her up and took her to the tree where her mother, Tia, raced down and retrieved her!

I followed them for the rest of the day and baby seemed to do fine. She was nursing and even played a little with her mother. She didn't move more than an arm's length from Tia for most of the day -- she had one hand on her at all times!

Later on in the day, when the party began to travel, Tia ended up last, stopping frequently to worry over her wound, which attracted a lot of flies. Each time, she would set the baby down.

Finally, Mike -- the adolescent who went and retrieved Aimee in the first place -- picked up the baby and carried her for Tia for the next 15 minutes!

Tia took the baby back when they reached a spot where the whole group fed, and they slept not very far from there.

The last time I saw them yesterday, Tia was feeding on Keno flowers and Aimee was sitting about a foot from her. The chimps slept there, and my assistant Michel is following them today, and keeping an eye on Tia and Aimee.

I came into town to talk to the Forestry Department officials about this problem as well as projects we are either currently working on or would like to implement specifically about conservation.

It turns out that the people who captured Aimee were two high-school age young men who live in Kedougou but routinely go out to the woodlands in the southern part of the chimps' range to hunt warthogs, etc. with their dogs.

I can write more about this problem and our efforts to solve it later, but I don't want to dwell on that side of things today -- I really just wanted to fill you in on the details of the miraculous return of Aimee. I don't know if this has ever happened before, but the likelihood of a baby chimpanzee actually being returned to its mother like this has to be pretty rare occurrence, especially given the fact that the mother is most often killed in the process. In fact, I can hardly believe it myself.

Most of the credit has to go to Johnny Kante. He fed Aimee every time she vocalized! He would make a great chimp mom, I told him!

Thanks to Cleve H for the link

80% of people chose torture

From BBC.com
A French TV documentary features people in a spoof game show administering what they are told are near lethal electric shocks to rival contestants.

Those taking part are told to pull levers to inflict shocks - increasing in voltage - upon their opponents. Although unaware that the contestants were actors and there was no electrical current, 82% of participants in the Game of Death agreed to pull the lever. Programme makers say they wanted to expose the dangers of reality TV shows. They say the documentary shows how many participants in the setting of a TV show will agree to act against their own principles or moral codes when ordered to do something extreme.

The Game of Death has all the trappings of a traditional TV quiz show, with a roaring crowd chanting "punishment" and a glamorous hostess urging the players on. Christophe Nick, the maker of the documentary, said they were "amazed" that so many participants obeyed the sadistic orders of the game show presenter. "They are not equipped to disobey," he told AFP. "They don't want to do it, they try to convince the authority figure that they should stop, but they don't manage to."

Yale experiment

The results reflect those of a similar experiment carried out almost 50 years ago at Yale University by social psychologist Stanley Milgram. Participants took the role of a teacher, delivering what they believed were shocks to an actor every time they answered a question incorrectly. Mr Nick says that his experiment shows that the TV element further increases people's willingness to obey. "With Milgram, 62% of people obeyed an abject authority. In the setting of television, it's 80%," he told Reuters.

The documentary was broadcast on the state-owned France 2 channel on Wednesday evening.

Thanks to Linn G for the link

Does "our internal moral cup runneth over" when we go green?

From Newsweek.com
Environmental Hypocrisy
A new study shows that people are more likely to cheat and steal after buying green products.
By Sharon Begley

There have probably been environmental hypocrites ever since the first caveman professed his love of wildlife right before going out and slaughtering giant herds of megafauna, but it's never been clear exactly what underlies the hypocrisy. Sure, it's easier to say than to do (to laud walking and carpooling but drive an SUV), and we're all good at exceptionalism (everyone else should cut back on jet travel, but it's really important that I take my private jet to the meeting on climate change). Still, hypocrisy is so rife, there surely has to be more to it.

In the case of environmental hypocrisy, that "more" may be the virtuous glow we get from doing one little green thing: it casts an outsize moral halo. That is, we feel so righteous when we buy organic food or a compact fluorescent bulb or a Prius that our internal moral cup runneth over. According to this model, which is called compensatory ethics (see the PDF of the first paper on this Web site), people have an inner sense of how morally virtuous they need to feel to support their self-image. If a few actions (including espousing actions for other people) are enough to justify how we like to think of ourselves, then we do not need to perform any additional virtuous actions. It's as if we accumulate moral points for ethical actions, and having accumulated "enough" we are free to act amorally, or even immorally. That's why reminding people of what wonderful humanitarians they are causes them to give less to charity.
"Virtuous acts can license subsequent asocial and unethical behaviors," writes Nina Mazar and Chen-Bo Zhong of the University of Toronto in a paper scheduled for publication in the coming months in Psychological Science.

Two new experiments suggest there is something to this. Mazar and Zhong had 156 volunteers (University of Toronto students) visit online stores that carried mostly green products, or only a few. After browsing for a while, some of the volunteers played the dictator game: they were given $6, and told they could propose to divide the money with a partner any way they liked. The caveat: the partner could accept or reject the proposed division, and if he rejected it, then no one would get any money. Proposing a 5-to-1 split was therefore likely to send both parties home empty-handed, whereas a 3-3 split, or even a 4-2, was more likely to pay off.

Volunteers who saw lots of green products proposed more generous splits than those who saw conventional ones, by $2.12 to $1.59—one third more. That reflects the well-established priming effect, in which subtle cues shape our behavior (if we see pictures of upscale restaurants, we tend to improve our table manners; seeing Apple's logo makes people more creative, at least in lab experiments). Simply seeing green products, which symbolize high ethical standards and selflessness, causes people to unconsciously adjust their behavior to be more ethical and generous, in this case by sharing more money.

Buying green products—some of the volunteers were given $25 to spend in the green store, while others were given $25 to spend in the conventional store—had an entirely different effect. Volunteers who bought up to $25 worth of ecofriendly stuff from the green store shared less money ($1.76) than those who purchased from the conventional store ($2.18). (Just to be clear, the volunteers were not given a choice about which online store to patronize.) For the green buyers, altruism in the dictator game decreased. More alarming, when the green buyers were then given a chance to cheat on a computer game, and lie about it to the scientists in order to win more money—basically, to steal—they did. Buyers of conventional products did not. And in an honor system in which they took money from an envelope to pay themselves their winnings, the green buyers stole six times more than the conventional buyers did.

"In line with the halo associated with green consumerism…people act more altruistically after mere exposure to green products," Mazar and Zhong write in their upcoming paper. But they "act less altruistically and are more likely to cheat and steal after purchasing green products than after purchasing conventional products." Or, as Mazar put it to me, "we are more likely to transgress morally after we have bought ourselves some moral offsets" (analogous to carbon offsets: buy enough so you can drive that Hummer). It was especially striking that the moral balancing occurred in an area of life—being generous with money, cheating on a computer game—that has nothing to do with green behavior. "This suggests that if we want to change people's behavior for the better, we have to be sure it doesn't backfire," says Mazar—starting, perhaps, by eliminating the halo of self-congratulatory, smug virtuousness that surrounds green behavior.

The usual caveats for this kind of experiment apply. One hundred fifty-six university students may not be representative of society as a whole. The situation was artificial: playing the dictator game and the computer game, not helping a blind man across the street or volunteering at a soup kitchen. The amount of money at stake in the computer game where cheating and stealing were possible was small—less than $1. Still, as Mazar points out, the money was completely real to the volunteers, and she believes the findings do apply in the real world.

There is no telling how powerful the boomerang effect of compensatory ethics might be. If someone has just bought free-trade, shade-grown coffee, is he more likely to shove you out of his way? If she's just lugged her e-waste to the recycling center, is she more likely to cut in line at the bank? Just to be safe, I'm not letting my husband anywhere near our tax return after he weatherstrips our doors this weekend.

Sharon Begley is NEWSWEEK's science editor and author of Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain: How a New Science Reveals Our Extraordinary Potential to Transform Ourselves.

Altruism in Forest Chimpanzees: The Case of Adoption

Figure 3. The adult male Porthos with his adopted female infant Gia.

Altruism in Forest Chimpanzees: The Case of Adoption
Christophe Boesch, Camille Bolé, Nadin Eckhardt, Hedwige Boesch
PLoSone: http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0008901

Abstract
In recent years, extended altruism towards unrelated group members has been proposed to be a unique characteristic of human societies. Support for this proposal seemingly came from experimental studies on captive chimpanzees that showed that individuals were limited in the ways they shared or cooperated with others. This dichotomy between humans and chimpanzees was proposed to indicate an important difference between the two species, and one study concluded that “chimpanzees are indifferent to the welfare of unrelated group members”. In strong contrast with these captive studies, consistent observations of potentially altruistic behaviors in different populations of wild chimpanzees have been reported in such different domains as food sharing, regular use of coalitions, cooperative hunting and border patrolling. This begs the question of what socio-ecological factors favor the evolution of altruism. Here we report 18 cases of adoption, a highly costly behavior, of orphaned youngsters by group members in Taï forest chimpanzees. Half of the adoptions were done by males and remarkably only one of these proved to be the father. Such adoptions by adults can last for years and thus imply extensive care towards the orphans. These observations reveal that, under the appropriate socio-ecologic conditions, chimpanzees do care for the welfare of other unrelated group members and that altruism is more extensive in wild populations than was suggested by captive studies.