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Study Places Bonobos With A Fascinating Decision: Eat Their Small Portion Of Food Or Share It With A Hungry Stranger
by Jeff Roberts
Bonobos Are Teaching Scientists About The Evolution Of Kindness
Man’s altruistic nature is a unique characteristic that has for the longest time separated us from the majority of the dog-eat-dog species on our planet. Kindness, empathy and compassion are among these distinctive qualities.
But an endangered group of Great Apes is now revealing that it is not just man who carries these altruistic attributes. National Geographic recently released an article discussing how these distant relatives are helping scientists to understand more about the evolution of our compassionate human virtues.
Evolutionary anthropologists Brian Hare and Jungzhi Tan of Duke University have been studying Bonobos at the Lola Ya Bonobo Sanctuary in Kinshasa, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Many of the Bonobos stationed there are orphans that were rescued from the cruel reality of human exploitation.
Unlike other nonhuman primates—including our other closest living relatives, chimpanzees—peace-loving Bonobos seem to tolerate strangers, share resources with random Bonobos, and exhibit a form of empathy called contagious yawning.
These findings may help to solve the long-standing evolutionary puzzle of why humans show kind or helpful behavior to other humans beyond their immediate family or group: it could have a biological basis.
“Certainly culture and education play an important role in the development of human altruism, but the Bonobo finding tells us that even the most extreme form of human tolerance and altruism is in part driven by our genes,” Tan said to National Geographic.
Sharing Means Caring
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Source: http://philosophers-stone.co.uk/wordpress/2014/06/study-places-bonobos-with-a-fascinating-decision-eat-their-small-portion-of-food-or-share-it-with-a-hungry-stranger/
