Captive chimps choose to help their neighbours

[xchrom]

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/captive-chimps-choose-to-help-their-neighbours-2334145.html

The willingness to help strangers and not expect anything in return is supposed to be a uniquely human characteristic but scientists have shown that chimps are also capable of altruism.

A study of chimpanzees kept at a primate research centre in the United States has for the first time found that, under certain circumstances, captive apes will help other individuals without appearing to expect any benefit from their generosity.

Previous studies on captive chimpanzees have seemingly failed to find any evidence of altruism in our closest living relative, although scientists observing chimp behaviour in the wild have documented instances where unrelated individuals will help others in an apparently unselfish manner.

The researchers suggest that the failure to find so-called "prosocial" traits in captivity was due to poorly designed experiments. A much simpler experiment has shown that female chimps will help a companion without necessarily wanting something in return.

[Cirque du So-What]

1. Chimps are more altruistic than some people I know

Please, do NOT introduce Ayn Rand's screed to them!

[Peace Patriot]

2. So, what IS the difference between chimps and humans?

I remember reading that their DNA and our DNA are almost identical. Can't remember the %, but it was something like 99% identical. Only a teensy bit of the DNA strand is different. Obviously, they don't build skyscrapers, iPods, refrigerators or nuclear weapons. They are, however, curious, dextrous, conniving, clever, communicative (with each other and with us through sign language), tribal (personal bonds, as opposed to mere herd instinct), individualistic with very distinct characters and roles in the tribe (and in relationship to humans), and they can learn and innovate. They also look, move and behave more like us than other animals, and relate to us in kindred ways, as if we were members of their tribe. Dolphins, elephants and others have some or most of these characteristics, plus bigger brains than humans, but chimp DNA is the most similar, almost identical.

We see a lot of similarities but also vast differences. What could be in that 1% (or so) bit of DNA that results in cities, libraries, cathedrals, guns, wristwatches, tall ships, astrolabes, hydroelectric dams and putting men on the moon? The Pyramids. Hubble. The Golden Gate Bridge. The Great Wall of China. Babylonia, Athens, Greece, Rome, Rio de Janeiro.

I could go on.

What IS it? Is anybody looking into this? In what ways are they investigating it? What are their theories? I haven't seen much on this particular question, which seems an awesomely important one: what makes us human? (--or, is it that bit of DNA that does?)

When I read about nuclear physics (in the popular literature--I'm not a scientist), I am struck by the baffling mystery at the heart of matter--a vanishing point, in the inmost (smallest) "region," that seems to look like this: + and -.

Now look at a Hubble photo of just one sector of the photographable Universe, with its mind-boggling display of whirling, twirling galaxies containing billions and billions of stars and trillions of planets.

What are we missing that creates civilization out of a tweak of one bit of DNA, and that creates EVERYTHING out of + and -?

Some people would say "God"--an all-powerful outside agent ("first cause") who cares about us tiny critters and the anthills we've built on Earth. I'm an agnostic on that aspect of "God" although I think there's something there, that may be discoverable and knowable, in our virtually universal longing for a cosmic protector and for extension of our lives--or meaning invested in our lives--by God or Gods. (Personally, I think it is projection--that is, there is something in us that is aiming at becoming the God or Gods whom we imagine to be controlling things; it is a collective wish or projection, and it is achievable, as a collective endeavor: humans becoming all- or very powerful, living for millennia and maybe forever (never dying) and developing the knowledge and benevolence of our best projection. 'We are the God we have been waiting for.")

But I am NOT saying that this apparent mystery at the heart of matter, and in that DNA bit which seems to be the difference between merely clever apes and writing "A Midsummer Night's Dream" or putting cameras on Mars and around Jupiter, is unknowable and undiscoverable. It is probably no more unknowable and undiscoverable than the Americas were to Medieval Europeans. We seem to be heading right for those discoveries. What makes us as conscious and as collectively and increasingly powerful as we obviously are? How does space, time and "matter," below the quark "level," create the space, time and what is obviously "matter" (hundreds of billions of galaxies) at the human level (our experience of it) and the human-perceivable Cosmic level?

These two questions are IN our brains and are a pretty good summary of the whole project of science. (What is matter and why do we care?)

Just wanted to tell you what this article stimulated in this particular human brain. Why "altruism" in chimps prompted this train of thought, I'm not sure, but I think it is a good example of that 1% of DNA (apparently?) creating civilization. And I'm very curious about HOW it does that, if it does, and if anybody knows what is going on with that research.

[struggle4progress]

4. A natural guess might be that we have a manipulative advantage with opposing thumbs

and a cultural advantage due to throat and jaw differences that make articulated speech easier: so it's easier for us to experiment with the world, and it's easier for us to communicate our knowledge; toss in one or two million years of slight physiological evolution (supporting our ability to think about our experiences and to pass on our experience), and a simultaneous one or two million years of cultural evolution (reflecting insights from experience), and the advantage becomes substantial

There are various human oddities that reflect this heightened importance of culture: humans are born with larger brains, so large (in fact) that childbirth is significantly riskier; despite this, human females are sexually receptive for much more time than most primates, which typically leads to close pair bonding; human children reach adulthood more slowly than animals; thus, there is a long period during which most children use their comparatively-large brains to learn the local human-knowledge-base from several nearby adults

[Peace Patriot]

5. Yes, we can see the EFFECTS of the 1% DNA difference...

...(if that is what is going on, that that tiny bit of DNA makes the difference), but the effects are so great that they seem way out of proportion to the bit of DNA that differs from chimps.

I really don't know what DNA scientists think is contained in that DNA bit (or if they know, or have theories about it). For instance, does that DNA bit contain the instructions for our 'opposable thumb'? Does it contain the instructions for all such differences?

You make a good point about the several million years of human evolution. Take a slight difference and add two million years of taking advantage of that slight difference and you have...Pythagoras!

One thing our brains do not do well is to provide an adequate notion of "one million years," let alone "two million years" (or any of the staggering numbers involved in describing the age, distances, numbers of galaxies/stars and evolution of the Universe). (The one that always gets me is that the light that we see in the stars in the night sky started traveling toward us upteen gazillion years ago--and trying to imagine what's there now.) A million years is a lo-o-o-o-o-ong time!

I was reading the latest about the pre-humans the other day (a cave in South Africa that has dibs on maybe containing the earliest pre-humans), and was trying to think about a million years of chipping rocks and foraging. It's really hard to think about--to conceptualize. We are used to something new every minute, instant communication, instance gratification, instant changes of venue and lifestyles, and covering distances in an instant of easy travel that would have taken our ancestors months or years, even lifetimes. We have also seen mind-boggling change within just the last hundred years--about the limit of time that we can really grasp. My mother was born in the horse-and-buggy era. No telephones. No TV. No radio. No airplanes. No electricity. A few cars, I think. About a half a century later the society she was born into had put men on the moon! And by the end of the century, most people had an electronic device in their homes that could launch nuclear missiles or run the entire world economy. 100 years.

We've grown accustomed to this, with typical human adaptability, but it does make it very difficult for us to imagine the SLOW pace of life only a hundred years ago. We really cannot imagine--or cannot fathom--a million years of even slower change, with maybe ten thousand years going by between humans chipping one kind of rock then chipping another, better kind of rock.

But we have to try to imagine this: an advantage over time. Building advantage upon advantage, ve-e-e-ery slowly.

I still think this 1% (or so) DNA difference from chimps is a great mystery, though--as to our line of evolutionary development. The dolphins have bigger brains and may have a civilization based on entirely different principles: inner peace, profound interconnectedness, relating elaborate stories and histories in song and by telepathy, love of swimming, ritual joy, open, free sexuality, plenty of food, group-devised strategies for finding it and "herding" it, fab sonar alarm system for sharks--no need to chip rocks and plod over miles of terrain to find roots and berries, no need to plant and harvest, no need for markets, temples, cities, fortresses, irrigation canals or iPods. Got everything we need, thank you very much. Born to smile.

Maybe we are just slightly more than clever chimps, with a very limited notion of what civilization is or could be. Maybe I'm overly impressed with our civilization as evidence of a great difference from the chimps. Maybe it's just chimp-culture writ large. Add consciousness and a certain arrogance, to chimps, and the meanness to enslave others to build our temples and war machines ... hm ...maybe the mere 1% difference is telling us something.

Well, I'd sure like to know more. I guess I'll have to do some research and see what's up with the latest DNA studies.

[struggle4progress]

6. I'm not only guessing what the differences are, I'm guessing how the differences

interacted and what the evolutionary selections might have been

For example, it's plausible that the opposing thumb and the jaw differences co-evolved, reducing the need for a jaw that could hold and tear objects, because it could be substituted by the hand. It's also possible that the jaw differences and the speech ability co-evolved, because the jaw differences somewhat free the tongue for enunciation. It's also possible that the speech ability and larger brain co-evolved, because the speech abilities are plausibly correlated with abstract thinking. So one can imagine an evolutionary development that simultaneously enhances ability to make tools, to communicate experience, and to reason abstractly. And the abilities to communicate experience and to reason abstractly are plausibly most advantageous when sociability increases, so ideas pass back and forth most readily

The problem of figuring out exactly WHAT the DNA differences signify is, I think, quite trickly: DNA typically codes for proteins, which very often means: enzymes that simply increase the rates of particular chemical reactions. So the genetic difference between us and chimps is just -- certain chemical reactions run at different rates, so the brain develops differently, the skeleton develops differently, body hair appears in different patterns at different times ...

The problem of understanding cultural issues is difficult for a different reason: our cultural heritage is so "common-sensical" to us that we barely notice it -- it is obvious to me that dreams are not real, but perhaps that was an view that nobody accepted in Homeric times; it is obvious to me that I should bundle up when it is cold outside, but the Tierra del Fuegans purported slept naked in the snow ...

[rayofreason]

7. One big difference...

...in ability is due to one small mutation in FOXP2. It gives us language.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOXP2
http://www.evolutionpages.com/FOXP2_language.htm

for the more scientifically inclined (and if you have access to these journals) -

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v418/n6900/abs/nature01025.html
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v462/n7270/abs/nature08549.html
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0002929707629024
http://journals.lww.com/neuroreport/Abstract/2002/06120/Language_impaired_children__No_sign_of_the_FOXP2.20.aspx

The first paper is the primary reference, with 825 citations.

[Orsino]

8. A theory of mind.

Humans tend to develop this sense, at about the age of five, that another person's knowledge can differ from one's own. Not coincidentally, this is about the age when kids begin to able to lie well.

Chimps seem to be able to do simple subterfuge, but aren't great liars.

We routinely juggle multiple interdependent relationships in our day-to-day activities, in ways that make chimps look like innocents.

[The Backlash Cometh]

3. Sounds like Stockholm syndrome.