Chimpanzees will trade tools to help their partners, and new research reveals that chimps will go to great lengths to help each other.
The study, conducted at the Sweetwaters Chimpanzee Sanctuary in Kenya, observed 12 chimpanzees in a experiment designed to test out their abilities to collaborate with one another. Many animals work together to hunt or defend their shared territory, but often work independently of each other, merely working toward a common goal.
"This study provides the first evidence that one of our closest primate relatives, the chimpanzees, not only intentionally coordinate actions with each other, but that they even understand the necessity to help a partner performing her role," said Dr. Alicia Melis in a press release. "These are skills shared by both chimpanzees and humans, so such skills may have been present in their common ancestor before humans evolved their own complex forms of collaboration." Melis is a behavioral scientists at Warwick Business School in the UK and at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
The researchers split the chimpanzees into groups of two and placed them in front of a sealed box of grapes with two tools, a rake and a stick. One chimp had to use the rake to push the grapes to one end of the box, where the other chimp could use the stick to tip over the box, releasing the grapes onto the floor, where the two could eat them.
Of the chimpanzees tested, 10 of the 12 figured out that they needed to transfer one tool to their partner. The chimps chose the right tool to hand over in 73 percent of the attempts.
"There were great individual differences regarding how quickly they started transferring tools to their partner," Melis said. "However, after transferring a tool once, they subsequently transferred tools in 97 percent of trials and successfully worked together to get the grapes in 86 percent of trials."
Chimpanzees are not exactly the kindest animals in the jungle (we should know, as a close relation also prone to violence), but this new research shows that when a problem needs to be solved (or grapes need to be eaten), chimps, too, can come together and collaborate.
"Although chimpanzees are generally very competitive when trying to gain access to food and would rather work alone and monopolize all the food rewards, this study shows that they are willing and able to strategically support the partner performing their role when their own success is dependent on the partner's," says the release.
