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On the Origin of Cooperative Species: New study reverses a decade of research claiming chimpanzee selfishness
By Eric Michael Johnson | August 8, 2011 |
1
"Sharing is Caring" by Nathaniel Gold
Charles Darwin had more in common with chimpanzees than even he realized. Before he was universally known for his theory of natural selection, the young naturalist was faced with one of the great moral choices in the history of science. The decision he made has long been hailed as the type of behavior that fundamentally separates humans from other apes. But a new study reveals for the first time that thinking of others unites humans and chimpanzees in a cooperative bond that reaches across two epochs to the very evolutionary ancestor Darwin predicted.
On the morning of June 18, 1858, a parcel arrived that threatened to undo the originality of Darwin’s masterwork. Alfred Russel Wallace, a friend of Darwin’s who was then conducting field research in Borneo, sent his colleague a theory of evolutionthat closely matched what Darwin had secretly been working on for more than two decades.
“Even his terms now stand as heads of my chapters,” Darwin wrote, almost in a panic. “So all my originality, whatever it may amount to, will be smashed.”
What should he do? Borneo was thousands of miles away, what if the package had never arrived? After all, mail was lost at sea all the time. Darwin could publish his theory immediately and take his chances with any awkwardness he might face with his friend down the road. But that’s not what he chose to do.
“I would far rather burn my whole book than that he or any man should think that I had behaved in a paltry spirit,” he wrote to Charles Lyell, his friend and mentor. “He does not say he wishes me to publish; but I shall, of course, at once write and offer to send to any journal.” And so Wallace’s outline was included alongside an abstract of Darwin’s theory and presented jointly before the Linnaen Society the following month. Rather than receive a reward all to himself, Darwin made a prosocial choice so that his colleague could receive one as well. On the Origin of Species was published just over a year later.
This kind of prosocial behavior, a form of altruism that seeks to benefit others and promote cooperation, has now been found in the species that Charles Darwin did more than any other human to connect us with. A paper released today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by Victoria Horner, J. Devyn Carter, Malini Suchak, and Frans de Waal of the Yerkes National Primate Research Center at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, is the first to document spontaneous prosocial choice by chimpanzees, a species that, until now, was thought to be “indifferent to the welfare” of others.
On the Origin of Cooperative Species: New study reverses a decade of research claiming chimpanzee selfishness
By Eric Michael Johnson | August 8, 2011 |
1"Sharing is Caring" by Nathaniel Gold
Charles Darwin had more in common with chimpanzees than even he realized. Before he was universally known for his theory of natural selection, the young naturalist was faced with one of the great moral choices in the history of science. The decision he made has long been hailed as the type of behavior that fundamentally separates humans from other apes. But a new study reveals for the first time that thinking of others unites humans and chimpanzees in a cooperative bond that reaches across two epochs to the very evolutionary ancestor Darwin predicted.
On the morning of June 18, 1858, a parcel arrived that threatened to undo the originality of Darwin’s masterwork. Alfred Russel Wallace, a friend of Darwin’s who was then conducting field research in Borneo, sent his colleague a theory of evolutionthat closely matched what Darwin had secretly been working on for more than two decades.
“Even his terms now stand as heads of my chapters,” Darwin wrote, almost in a panic. “So all my originality, whatever it may amount to, will be smashed.”
What should he do? Borneo was thousands of miles away, what if the package had never arrived? After all, mail was lost at sea all the time. Darwin could publish his theory immediately and take his chances with any awkwardness he might face with his friend down the road. But that’s not what he chose to do.
“I would far rather burn my whole book than that he or any man should think that I had behaved in a paltry spirit,” he wrote to Charles Lyell, his friend and mentor. “He does not say he wishes me to publish; but I shall, of course, at once write and offer to send to any journal.” And so Wallace’s outline was included alongside an abstract of Darwin’s theory and presented jointly before the Linnaen Society the following month. Rather than receive a reward all to himself, Darwin made a prosocial choice so that his colleague could receive one as well. On the Origin of Species was published just over a year later.
This kind of prosocial behavior, a form of altruism that seeks to benefit others and promote cooperation, has now been found in the species that Charles Darwin did more than any other human to connect us with. A paper released today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by Victoria Horner, J. Devyn Carter, Malini Suchak, and Frans de Waal of the Yerkes National Primate Research Center at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, is the first to document spontaneous prosocial choice by chimpanzees, a species that, until now, was thought to be “indifferent to the welfare” of others.
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