’Peter Pan’ Apes Never Seem to Learn Selfishness

Cambridge, Mass. February 1, 2010 - Daycare workers and kindergarten teachers tend to offer young humans a lot of coaching about the idea of sharing. But for our ape cousins the bonobos, sharing just comes naturally. In fact, according to a pair of papers published by researchers at Harvard University and Duke University in the latest issue of the journal Current Biology, it looks like bonobos never learn how not to share. Chimpanzees, by contrast, are notorious for hogging food to themselves, by physical aggression if necessary. While chimps will share as youngsters, they grow out of it. In several experiments to measure food-sharing and social inhibition among chimps and bonobos living in African sanctuaries, the researchers say these behavioral differences may be rooted in developmental patterns that portray something about the historical lifestyles of these two closely related apes.