Sharing In Our Genes?

An intriguing study published this week suggests that bonobos, among the closest relatives to humans, are surprisingly willing to hand over food to a pal. But they didn’t share tools.

The discovery adds a new wrinkle to scientists’ efforts to understand the evolutionary origins of people’s unusual propensity to help others.

“One of the things that is really striking about humans is how cooperative or helpful we are,” says Christopher Krupenye, an evolutionary anthropologist at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. “It’s just a really pervasive element of our behavior.”

“We gave one individual several nuts, and the other individual several stones. And we wanted to see whether they would help each other out,” says Krupenye. “Either of them could transfer their surplus resources to help their partner.”

Ativan has got the following effects around the abuser with regards to its use being an abused substance. samples viagra What is needed, specifically, is prescription cialis drugs that can relax the right muscles to stimulate blood flow to the penis, increase libido and the frequency may reduce from twice a week to twice a month. In cases of cheapest viagra online acute and chronic, recurring ear infections that are not treated conservatively, surgery may be recommended in which small tubes are placed in the child’s ears. Men are presently all the more eager to confess to requiring a help and making a move to get it. online sildenafil Bonobos showed very little motivation to hand over stones, again suggesting that sharing tools or objects is not part of their usual routine. “They just don’t seem to show this kind of behavior,” says Krupenye.

But they did consistently share nuts — even though they could have easily kept the nuts for themselves. And that’s very different than what’s observed among chimpanzees, the researchers report Tuesday in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

NPR Coverage

I think they need further research. Maybe they didn’t share the stones because of who it was. “That’s Stan, he never returns my tools!”

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