Re: Paper: Chimpanzees are indifferent to the welfare of unrelated group members
- From: "Perplexed in Peoria" <jimmenegay@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 31 Oct 2005 11:31:54 -0500 (EST)
"Jim McGinn" <jimmcginn@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:dk0ks6$2mv9$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
> Perplexed in Peoria wrote:
>
> > The experimental design here can be criticized. IIRC, chimps generally
> > generally do not store or carry food, they simply go to the food and eat
> > it there. Hence, they don't have much opportunity for food sharing in
> > the wild. Even the weaned young generally forage for themselves.
>
> I don't see how this is criticism of the design of
> the experiment.
My point is that due to the normal ecology of chimps, they may
be no more likely to help another chimp feed, than to help
another chimp breathe. The possibility just doesn't occur to them.
> And the examples you provided
> seemed to have more to do with explaining the
> difference in food availability in the environment
> that may be the underlying cause of the differences
> in levels of altruism. For example, one might
> hypothesizes that since altruism is low in chimps
> and since chimps reside in an environment,
> rainforest, that provides constant abudance that,
> therefore, the emergence of altruism in the human
> lineage might have originally had something to do
> with some kind of temporal and/or geographic form
> of scarcity in the environment of the earliest
> hominids.
I have no criticisms of your hypothesis. It seems possible.
> > The
> > classic examples of rare foodsharing in chimps involve 'luxury foods'
> > such as hunted meats. It is not clear whether the food pellets involved
> > in this experiment would psychologically seem like staples to the chimps
> > (in which case, why share - the other individual is responsible for feeding
> > himself!) or whether they were luxury goods like colobus monkey brains
> > (which might have a greater likelihood of being shared).
>
> But these observations involved sharing within the
> chimp group. The study focussed on sharing outside
> of the chimp group.
Actually, I'm pretty sure this study involved sharing within the
group with unrelated individuals. Quoting:
They spurn the chance to deliver benefits to unrelated but familiar
individuals at no cost to themselves, cooperating only with their kin and
partners.
> They haven't been observed
> sharing monkey brains outside of the group.
Wild chimps rarely interact with chimps outside the group.
> > Non-human psychology (and cross-cultural human psychology for that matter)
> > is tricky, and the idea of a single 'decisive' experiment is an illusion.
>
> Strange comment. I thought it was a pretty tame
> observation. I've always thought it was plainly
> obvious that humans are much more altruistic than
> any other species, except the social insects.
I don't object to the 'obvious' claim you are making here. What I do
object to is arriving at the sweeping conclusion appearing in the title
of this thread from a small number of experiments dealing with only
one aspect of 'welfare'.
.
- References:
- Paper: Chimpanzees are indifferent to the welfare of unrelated group members
- From: Robert Karl Stonjek
- Paper: Chimpanzees are indifferent to the welfare of unrelated group members
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