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Science 3 March 2006:
Vol. 311. no. 5765, p. 1209
DOI: 10.1126/science.311.5765.1209l
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This Week in Science

Lending assistance to relatives fits easily into evolutionary theory. Behaving in similar fashion with regard to unrelated individuals is harder to explain but undoubtedly occurs, at least amongst humans (see the Perspective by Silk). How, then, do you decide whether to cooperate with a potential partner? Melis et al. (p. 1297) asked whether cooperation is uniquely human. In two situations, they found that chimpanzees recruited a partner to help them to solve a difficult task and that they prefer partners who are more adept. Warneken and Tomasello (p. 1301) tested matched situations on human infants and young chimpanzees, in which subjects were given the opportunity to commit a helpful action without reward. Infants were quite ready to help a stranger with a task, such as stacking books in a pile or placing them onto a cabinet shelf, and chimpanzees also displayed to a limited degree a similar capacity for altruism.




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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)