Endangered Bonobos Reveal Evolution of Human Kindness

[link to news.nationalgeographic.com]

Experiments show the great apes share with strangers and empathize.

By James Owen
for National Geographic

Published June 10, 2014

Marked by their kindness to strangers, bonobos are helping scientists solve the mystery of a particularly human quality: our altruistic nature.
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It's a cruel irony, then, that the very bonobos that are shedding light on how our humanity toward others arose are the orphans of mothers killed by, you guessed it, humans. (Read about bonobos in National Geographic magazine.)

The bonobos, orphaned by illegal hunters in central Africa, are the study subjects of evolutionary anthropologists Brian Hare and Jingzhi Tan, both of Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.

Working with the rescued apes at the Lola Ya Bonobo Sanctuary in Kinshasa, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Hare and Tan have revealed a social side to bonobos that was previously thought to be uniquely human.

Unlike other nonhuman primates—including our other closest living relatives, chimpanzees—peace-loving bonobos seem to tolerate strangers, share resources with random bonobos, and exhibit a form of empathy called contagious yawning. (Related: "'Contagious' Yawning Occurs More Among Loved Ones.")

More at: [link to news.nationalgeographic.com]

Last Edited by SpaceCommand on 06/30/2014 11:03 AM