Primatology.net

Did you catch this publication, “Spontaneous Altruism by Chimpanzees and Young Children“? It seems like an interesting paper on altruism which is already pretty well established in non-human primates, but fascinating none-the-less.

I don’t feel the need to really be rehashing the traditional and misinformed dogma that only humans are capable of acting altruistically, putting others’ needs before one’s own, and that this is one of those abilities that separates man from other animals. We all know it is wrong, and the recent study I liked above is another nail in the coffin towards thinking humans are only altruistic living things.

This studies focuses on analyzing the degree of altruistic behavior of both chimpanzees and young children. In one test, the chimpanzees or children were confronted with an unfamiliar human adult, who was trying to reach a stick through some bars, but the stick was just out of reach. In some cases the human adult would offer a food reward in exchange for help reaching the stick, but in other cases there was no benefit accrued for helping.

Despite this, both the human infants and the chimpanzees helped out the adult the majority of the times. The next series of tests put a price at helping the adult human; the chimpanzees had to climb up 2.5 meters onto a ledge to help, and the human infants had to get past a series of obstacles. Again, the chimpanzees showed the same degree of altruism as the human infants.

In a final set of experiments, designed to test whether chimpanzees would show altruistic behavior towards members of their own species, the subject chimpanzees were presented with a test where another chimpanzee was trying to get into a chamber containing food. The only way this chimpanzee could get the food was if the subject pulled a chain, opening the door to the chamber. In this case, the subject chimp received no reward at all, other than that hearty sense of self-satisfaction one gets from being a nice guy. As with the other experiments, the subject chimpanzees would help out another individual even if there was no benefit to themselves.

According news bite of a long term study of Tibetan macaques (Macaca thibetana) in the Mount Huangshan Scenic Area of China’s Anhui Province, ecotourism is doing more harm than good. In the October edition of the International Journal of Primatology, the results of a 19 year long study will show that skyrocketing infant mortality coincided with an influx of ecotourism.

From National Geographic News,

“[Tibetan macaques] regularly compete for corn in a small open area within view of spectators. [Which] likely triggered adult aggression toward each other and toward their young… As a result, less than half of the infants survive into adulthood.

The results suggest that ecotourism can be deadly when not managed properly, said study co-author Carol Berman…

Berman’s team studied the Tibetan macaques for six years before ecotourism began in 1991.

They also collected data while tourists visited the animals between 1992 and 2004, including a span in 2003 when tourism was suspended.

Infant mortality had been low prior to ecotourism and was primarily caused by disease, the team found.

But exposing the monkeys to tourism was linked to high death rates caused by aggressive behavior among adults and toward infants. Although they didn’t witness all the attacks, many of the infant corpses Berman’s team found had bite wounds indicative of adult macaques.”

The National Geographic news piece on this publication goes on to interview Frans De Waal on his thoughts about ecotourism. He agrees with Berman that ecotourism works when it is managed properly.

The article goes on to cites that ecotourism for gorillas in Rwanda has helped out their case, but I beg to differ. We are seeing an influx of gorillas die from human acquired diseases. Many of these diseases like E. coli are not directly due to ecotourism, but other diseases… specifically communicable ones, take the common flu, can do serious damage to primate populations without acquired immunity to these pathogens.

In both of these cases, we see ecotourism not panning out to be what it was intended for — to spread awareness and help the conservation of primates. On the contrary ecotourism has serious side effects that we have no way of really calculating nor controlling.