Given the option between sharing with someone you know or don’t know, most would choose a friend. But a study, published in PLOS ONE on January 2, 2013, has revealed this is not necessarily the case with the bonobos. These unique great apes from Congo have a knack for sharing with strangers.
The recent discovery in social interaction has sparked numerous additional experiments aimed at the bonobos sharing habits. Dr. Brian Hare, an evolutionary anthropologist from Duke University, and research graduate student, Jingzhi Tan, ran a set of experiments to understand why bonobos prefer to share with strangers rather than their own group members. One experiment revealed that when a bonobo was given the option to share food with a group member or stranger, nine out of 14 of the tested bonobos picked the stranger first.
An interesting deviation from this habit of sharing occurs when the bonobos do not see any social benefit for themselves. One experiment demonstrated that if a bonobo lost a food reward and didn’t receive any social interaction, the bonobo would not share at all. These experiments suggest that bonobos would rather widen their social groups than maintain the associations they already have. The sharing habit is a selfish by-product of furthering the bonobo’s individual needs. In humans, sharing anonymously only occurs when the individual has a great deal of invested care for others.
Source: Science Daily
