They hug, they grab hands, they touch in support after a moment of anguish … an investigation has evidenced that Bonobos and Chimpanzees share the feeling of empathy that humans have, with slight differences by species when it comes to manifesting it.
The study, carried out by psychologists from the University of Durham (United Kingdom) and collected this Friday in the Magazine Evolution and Human Behavior, is the result of the observation of the behavior of 90 apes in sanctuaries of Africa to determine if the bonobos were more prone than the chimpanzees to comfort others in trouble, as thought so far.
This research is the first, according to the authors, which directly compares the trends to the consolation of the two species.
The authors monitored 40 bonobos in the ‘Lola Ya Bonobo’ sanctuary of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, already 50 chimpanzees in the Chimfunshi fauna orphanage in Zambia.
In total, the team registered 1,400 hours of observation of the two species, focusing on how individuals reacted when a group member had experienced a moment of natural anguish, as a fight.
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They hug, they grab their hands: bonobos and chimpanzees share empathy with humans
His analysis shows that, both in bonobos and chimpanzees, the older specimens seem less likely to comfort than the youngest, which would indicate that emotional sensitivity towards others, empathy, soon arises in the development of the apes.
In bonobos, younger individuals are more likely to comfort others and to be comforted. In chimpanzees, the most empathic have to be young males and social colleagues close to Chimpanzee who is suffering a bad time.
Both species comfort each other similar to humans, with behaviors that include scrubbing, hugging, grabbing from the hand and touching, says one of the authors Jake Brooker, a psychology researcher at the University of Durham.
“For a long time, bonobos has been considered as the most empathetic ape, and the chimpanzees the most violent and despotic. But we have discovered that it is not so, both species are equally prone to console,” says Brooker.
The researcher says that his findings “speak of the important individual and social variation within each species: as well as humans, bonobos and chimpanzees also show empathy flexibly depending on the individual, the group and the surrounding social culture.”
The authors want to continue collecting more data on different groups of apes in various environments to better understand our closest living relatives, which in turn could shed light on the evolution of human social behavior.
With EFE information.
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