Credit: Yerkes National Primate Res. Centre

Without any prior training, captive chimpanzees team up on a task, suggesting that the primates are more cooperative than previously thought.

Malini Suchak, now at Canisius College in Buffalo, New York, and her colleagues designed a device that required one or two chimps (Pan troglodytes) to remove a barrier in order for another individual to simultaneously obtain a tray of food. The researchers placed the device in a large enclosure in which 11 chimps lived, and found that the animals spontaneously worked together in groups of two or three to complete the task (pictured) more than 3,000 times — an average of 38 per one-hour session. Unlike most previous studies, the apes were free to choose their own partners, which could have allowed them to avoid competitors that might impede cooperation. Complex cooperative behaviour is not a uniquely human trait, the authors suggest.

PeerJ 2, e417 (2014)