Chimps Will Help But You Have To Ask

Most of the experiments contrived to test chimpanzee altruism centre around food sharing - which chimps are not good at because they do not do it in the wild. Therefore most researchers conclude chimps are very selfish. Here Shinya Yamamoto and colleagues decided to frame the question differently by having a chimp give or withhold an implement necessary to access food from another chimp. A pole to retrieve out-of-reach food, or a straw to push into the hole on a drinks carton, for instance. They noted that chimps were more likely to help out by making the tool available to another chimp than expected. This was more likely to happen if the chimps were related, as in a mother-offspring pair, or if the requester was a dominant. The chimps would only make the tool available if the other chimp begged for it, suggesting they were unable to read the other chimp's predicament and intentions unless an obvious sign of need was made. This suggests again that chimps may lack aspects of theory-of-mind we humans have and which informs our behaviour toward each other.