cooperation amongst chimps

ScienceWeek

ANIMAL BEHAVIOR: ON COOPERATION AMONG CHIMPANZEES

The following points are made by Joan B. Silk (Science 2006 311:1248):

1) Evolutionary theory predicts that altruistic interactions, which are
costly to the actor and beneficial to the recipient, will be limited to
kin or reciprocating partners. This precludes anonymous acts of
altruism on behalf of strangers, such as giving blood, or large-scale
cooperation, such as serving on committees. Cooperation is equally
perplexing to economists whose theorems are based on the principle of
maximizing profit and self-interest, not concern for the welfare of
others. Evolutionary theory and economic models provide a comfortable
fit for the behavior of other animals [1-5], including other highly
social and intelligent members of the primate order, but humans stand
out as a puzzling anomaly [1].

2) This raises two questions: Why do humans cooperate so much? And what
limits the extent of cooperation in other animals? While evolutionary
social scientists struggle with the first question, primatologists are
beginning to tackle the second. Much of this work focuses on
chimpanzees. Chimpanzees participate in a variety of collective
activities in the wild, but we can't say much about the motives
underlying cooperation or the factors that prevent them from
cooperating more in the wild. So researchers have headed into the
laboratory to probe the capacity and motivation for cooperation.

3) To cooperate effectively, individuals must know what needs to be
done and be willing to do it. Experimental efforts to induce nonhuman
primates (capuchins, tamarins, and chimpanzees) to work together in
joint tasks have met with mixed success. But it is not clear whether
collaborative failures occurred because animals didn't understand how
to solve the tasks or because they were inhibited by the presence of
competitors who monopolized the apparatus and appropriated rewards.

4) Two sets of experiments conducted by researchers at the Max Planck
Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany [2] provide
compelling evidence that chimpanzees collaborate effectively under
appropriate conditions. In one set of experiments, bowls of food were
attached to a platform outside the testing room. A rope was threaded
through the platform so that it could be pulled forward only if two
chimpanzees pulled on the ends of the rope at the same time. Pairs of
chimpanzees that got along well in other settings quickly learned to
solve this task together, but chimpanzees paired with less preferred
partners were much less successful. The same apparatus was used in
another set of experiments [2], but with one chimpanzee placed in the
testing room and the other in an adjoining room. The chimpanzee in the
testing room could admit the other by removing a key that locked the
door between the two rooms. First, Melis and her colleagues manipulated
the need for collaboration by varying the distance between the ends of
the rope threaded through the platform. A chimp was more likely to
recruit an assistant when the rope ends were too far apart to be pulled
at the same time by one individual. Second, the chimps were allowed to
choose between two potential collaborators who differed in their
effectiveness in the task. Initially, the chimpanzees did not
discriminate between the two assistants, but they came to show a strong
preference for the more effective helper.

References (abridged):

1. E. Fehr, U. Fischbacher, Nature 425, 785 (2003)

2. A. P. Melis, B. Hare, M. Tomasello, Science 311, 1297 (2006)

3. F. Warneken, M. Tomasello, Science 311, 1301 (2006)

4. S. T. Emlen, in Behavioural Ecology: An Evolutionary Approach, J. R.
Krebs, N. B. Davies, Eds. (Blackwell Scientific, Oxford, 1997), pp.
228-253

5. L. A. Dugatkin, Cooperation Among Animals (Oxford Univ. Press,
Oxford, 1997)

Science http://www.sciencemag.org
http://scienceweek.com/2006/sw060331-1.htm

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