FRIENDSHIP doesn鈥檛 run deep for captive chimpanzees. In a lab experiment, chimps failed to lend a helping hand to their fellows even though doing so wouldn鈥檛 have inconvenienced them.
Joan Silk of the University of California, Los Angeles, and her colleagues set captive chimps tests in which they could either choose to obtain a food reward for themselves, or for both themselves and another group member.
Only in around half the tests did the experimental subjects let another animal get a reward. And they were just as mean when another chimp was watching them (Nature, vol 437, p 1357).
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But Craig Stanford, a biological anthropologist at the University of Southern California, also in Los Angeles, argues that captive chimps may fail to behave naturally because they are socially impoverished. 鈥淭here鈥檚 a great deal of anecdotal evidence for empathy from field studies,鈥� he says.
