Tuesday, August 26, 2008 | Reason : In the News | print version

Monkeys Enjoy Giving To Others, Study Finds

by Science Daily

Thanks to Rob Harrand for the link.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/08/080825175005.htm

Monkeys Enjoy Giving To Others, Study Finds

ScienceDaily (Aug. 25, 2008) — Researchers at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center, Emory University, have shown capuchin monkeys, just like humans, find giving to be a satisfying experience. This finding comes on the coattails of a recent imaging study in humans that documented activity in reward centers of the brain after humans gave to charity.

Empathy in seeing the pleasure of another's fortune is thought to be the impetus for sharing, a trait this study shows transcends primate species.

Frans de Waal, PhD, director of the Living Links Center at the Yerkes Research Center, and Kristi Leimgruber, research specialist, led a team of researchers who exchanged tokens for food with eight adult female capuchins. Each capuchin was paired with a relative, an unrelated familiar female from her own social group or a stranger (a female from a different group).

The capuchins then were given the choice of two tokens: the selfish option, which rewarded that capuchin alone with an apple slice; or the prosocial option, which rewarded both capuchins with an apple slice. The monkeys predominantly selected the prosocial token when paired with a relative or familiar individual but not when paired with a stranger.

"The fact the capuchins predominantly selected the prosocial option must mean seeing another monkey receive food is satisfying or rewarding for them," said de Waal. "We believe prosocial behavior is empathy based. Empathy increases in both humans and animals with social closeness, and in our study, closer partners made more prosocial choices. They seem to care for the welfare of those they know," continued de Waal.

de Waal and his research team next will attempt to determine whether giving is self-rewarding to capuchins because they can eat together or if the monkeys simply like to see the other monkey enjoying food.

The research was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation and by the Yerkes base grant from the National Institutes of Health.

Journal reference:

1. Frans B. M. de Waal; Kristin Leimgruber; Amanda R. Greenberg. Giving is self-rewarding for monkeys. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,

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1. Comment #237175 by SamKiddoGordon on August 26, 2008 at 6:44 am

This might be a form of selfish gene. Giving the food to family helps genes carried by relatives. Deliberately not giving food to strangers limits competitive genes.

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2. Comment #237192 by rod-the-farmer on August 26, 2008 at 7:15 am

Proof that capuchins are more advanced than fundies, who would rather you gave them your money. And you don't have to go to some university lab to see this. Just turn on the TV.

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3. Comment #237194 by Steve13 on August 26, 2008 at 7:18 am

Isn't this just kin selection and reciprocal altruism?

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4. Comment #237197 by rod-the-farmer on August 26, 2008 at 7:27 am

A related story about donating to fundies. Possibly apocryphal. An elderly woman who was perhaps not in full control of her senses, once donated money to a fundie televangelist. Once she appeared on their mailing list, they bombarded her with repeated requests for more & more money. Eventually she had emptied her bank account. When her son found out about this, he called the fundie people, asking her money be returned, as she was not competent to make such a large donation. They laughed, and refused.

His reaction was (many years ago now) to program his computer to dial the fundie 1-800 toll-free number, then hang up after 10 seconds. It then looped, and repeated the process, 24 hours a day. The fundies became aware something was wrong, when they saw their incoming 1-800 costs going way up, yet the value of the donations did not. Questioning some of the telephone reps, they found many if not most had seen a number of hangup/wrong number calls. The fundie team traced these calls to the son of the woman who gave all her money. They threatened a lawsuit, to which he said "Go ahead. Let's see what a jury has to say about a big, rich organisation like yours taking all the money my mother was to live on for the rest of her life, leaving her in poverty."

They agreed to refund the money, on the understanding that he would not make public his computer program auto-dialer. Ooops. Sorry. I was not supposed to tell this story. Now I will have to kill you. No, wait, I was not party to the agreement. Tell you what....I will only tell this story once, as I promised not to repeat it.

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5. Comment #237207 by Ultraviolet G on August 26, 2008 at 7:52 am

The reporting of this study doesn't indicate if they observed only the behaviour itself or the associated firing of certain neurons.

This kind of money has a much simpler brain than apes so we would expect there to be a simple kin-based kind of altruism. More interesting would be studies on Gorillas and Bonobo's etc to see if they enjoy sharing even with strangers on the basis of camraderie rather than direct kinship. I'd suspect something like that would exist, as the basic version of human's even more wide-ranging altruism.

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6. Comment #237212 by dochmbi on August 26, 2008 at 8:05 am

@Rod: A good and viral story like that need only be told once.

@Ultraviolet:
That would be interesting to know.

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7. Comment #237214 by debaser71 on August 26, 2008 at 8:06 am

IMO the interesting part is that the monkeys didn't want to give the outsider and apple slice. Anyway this reinforces my notion that much of how humans act is based on ingroup outgroup social dynamics.

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8. Comment #237221 by Ishruul on August 26, 2008 at 8:18 am

Well I have also observed this kind of behavior in local chimpanzees. They seemed to deliberatly enjoy giving to the humans watching them in their cages.

Yet, I couldn't quite put my finger on the fact their 'gift' was in the form of the throwing of fecal matter, wich, incidentally, is not a great choice for a gift to little childrens and adults visiting them.

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9. Comment #237222 by J Mac on August 26, 2008 at 8:19 am

"Isn't this just kin selection and reciprocal altruism? "

Yup, nothing new here. I'd be interested to see what would happen if the "prosocial" option decreased the actors payout, ie: selfish token givens one apple slice, prosocial token gives one slice to family member but only half to the actor.

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10. Comment #237226 by Friend Giskard on August 26, 2008 at 8:24 am

The reciprocal altruism explanation only makes sense if the recipient of the favor knows who his benefactor is. The article should have made clear if this was the case here.

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11. Comment #237231 by franzdrs on August 26, 2008 at 8:32 am

I think a more clear experiment could be to give the monkey the choice to get the apple slice for himself or to get one half for each. That would tell if they are willing to lose some benefit for the sake of the other.

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12. Comment #237232 by J Mac on August 26, 2008 at 8:35 am

"The reciprocal altruism explanation only makes sense if the recipient of the favor knows who his benefactor is. The article should have made clear if this was the case here. "

It did:

"The monkeys predominantly selected the prosocial token when paired with a relative or familiar individual but not when paired with a stranger. "

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13. Comment #237243 by Friend Giskard on August 26, 2008 at 8:47 am

J Mac
That isn't clear. You can pair monkeys even if they are on opposite sides of the planet. And besides, it isn't clear that the recipient knows that its recieving a treat is a result of the actions of the other monkey. (Edit: I expect it probably did though.)

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14. Comment #237291 by Ishruul on August 26, 2008 at 10:15 am

Altruistic behavior are more interesting to watch in less human related species, like wasp, bees, ants, termite, bats(vampire bats share their own blood with others of the colony), naked mole rat (disgusting little fellow) and man o'war.

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15. Comment #237298 by J Mac on August 26, 2008 at 10:29 am

Giskard,

You are right that the article didn't go into detail on the methods, but seeing that they observed a significant difference between the behavior when paired with kin versus non kin there would have to be some other explanation for the difference if the monkeys were not aware that it was their kin there.

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16. Comment #237311 by bugaboo on August 26, 2008 at 10:40 am

J Mac

The words that jumped out at me from the article were " satisfying experience", "empathy" "enjoying".

Has bearing on the other post about the chimps. Also there was a post or article recently about yawning dogs.

Dont see why other mammals would not have mirror neurons.

Any thoughts?

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17. Comment #237420 by eh-theist on August 26, 2008 at 12:56 pm

Rod:

Great story - I wrote an app to do just that. An auto-dialer would call my place and tell me that I was selected for a free cruise and to hold on the line for important information. I was able to get the toll free number from them. For 19 days, the system dialed using 3 of my 4 phone lines. When it detected an answer it would say "Please hold as we have an important message for you" and would leave the line active until they hung up. As I really did have an important message for them, it would redial. Not once did they wait long enough for me to tell them the important information!

Unfortunately they changed their toll free number 19 days in so I never got to tell them that I wasn't interested in the cruise.

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18. Comment #237424 by Sciros on August 26, 2008 at 1:05 pm

I've seen wild ringtail lemurs feed wild deer (while I was on vacation on an island) for the heck of it. It was really interesting.

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19. Comment #237426 by kkelly on August 26, 2008 at 1:07 pm

18, Madagascar?

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20. Comment #237436 by eh-theist on August 26, 2008 at 1:21 pm

Sciros:
Which was on vacation? The deer or the ringtail lemurs?

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21. Comment #237455 by Sciros on August 26, 2008 at 1:57 pm

Sorry, I realized the sentence was ambiguous and opened it up to edit right away but had to leave the computer for a while before I had a chance to 'submit'. I expected a joke about it. It's fixed now.

KKelly, it's an island off the coast of Georgia, near Savannah -- St. Catherines.

It wasn't a 100% vacation, some work involved, but such a change of lifestyle/scenery that it was basically a vacation.

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22. Comment #237509 by J Mac on August 26, 2008 at 3:47 pm

"Dont see why other mammals would not have mirror neurons.

Any thoughts? "

I don't see any reason they wouldn't. And since they've been observed in both primates and birds I'd say there's a fair chance they're more widely spread, or at least the potential for such things is.

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23. Comment #237593 by Christopher Davis on August 26, 2008 at 7:35 pm

Scientists should come here to Afghanistan and repeat this experiment with the Pashtuns.

While I suspect that most of them would just select the selfish option, a few might pick the prosocial option...if they could figure out a way to get a cut of the relative's apple slice.

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24. Comment #237723 by 35bluejacket on August 27, 2008 at 4:44 am

Rod..

Much the same happened to my poor 90yo grandmother and Oral Roberts. She even had trouble paying for her medicine. But it was back in the 80's and I didn't have my moral ducks together to do anything.

Good story and I'll bet common.

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25. Comment #237729 by BillySands on August 27, 2008 at 4:49 am

Capuchins really are making a mockery of the idea that morality comes from god. They even have a sense of justice http://richarddawkins.net/article,1676,Monkeys-show-sense-of-justice,Dr-David-Whitehouse-BBC

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26. Comment #237740 by Titania on August 27, 2008 at 5:07 am

Re: 21. Comment #237455 by Sciros

Sciros, did you get any pictures? Can you give us more details? Thanks.

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27. Comment #237788 by Sciros on August 27, 2008 at 7:06 am

Capuchins really are making a mockery of the idea that morality comes from god. They even have a sense of justice http://richarddawkins.net/article,1676,Monkeys-show-sense-of-justice,Dr-David-Whitehouse-BBC

That article is bollocks. The experiment was carried out backwards. All it shows is monkeys would rather have food they like over food the don't like as much. Try the experiment the other way around and you'll see whether they really have a sense of "justice."

Titania, I got LOADS of pictures over the years. I don't think they're up anywhere online, though. Details about the island: it's about the size of Manhattan, it's a 20 min boat ride from the mainland, and it has a wildlife conservation program on it. It has lemurs on it (used to be several species, but I think it's now at most 2 -- ringtail and ruffed) roaming free. They are a wonder to observe. The island used to have endangered antelope and other really cool animals as well but the conservation program has really been victim to what I see as highly questionable direction following a change in the island's ownership.

There are no paved roads (ATVs or pickups are used for transportation), and loads of alligators, venomous snakes, dolphins, feral pigs and deer that occasionally require population "control" since the gators are rubbish at it, etc. Really neat place.

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28. Comment #237793 by latsot on August 27, 2008 at 7:18 am

> Isn't this just kin selection and reciprocal
> altruism?

No, although both would be good hypotheses to explain the results.

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29. Comment #237836 by BillySands on August 27, 2008 at 8:50 am

That article is bollocks. The experiment was carried out backwards. All it shows is monkeys would rather have food they like over food the don't like as much.

Actually, it shows they refuse the food if they see another monkey getting a better treat.

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30. Comment #237843 by Sciros on August 27, 2008 at 9:07 am

Right, and that means what?

All the study manages to suggest is that this response is related to monkeys liking grapes more than cucumbers. To interpret it to mean they have a sense of "justice" is wholly unwarranted given the data presented. This is such piss-poor science that I'd be ashamed if I were one of the researchers.

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31. Comment #237907 by BillySands on August 27, 2008 at 11:50 am

All the study manages to suggest is that this response is related to monkeys liking grapes more than cucumbers. To interpret it to mean they have a sense of "justice" is wholly unwarranted given the data presented.

If they are able to asssess the "goodness" of a treat and compare it to the "goodness" of a treat others get, and then refuse their treat if it does not compare favoribly to theirs suggests a sense of fairness. The monkeys with a poorer treat want a good one. The fact that they sometimes throw their treat away is indicative of feeling unfairly treated. It could be that this is manipulative behaviour, but they never got their way.

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32. Comment #237937 by Wosret on August 27, 2008 at 12:42 pm

30. Comment #237843 by Sciros

You do realize that they are not giving a monkey a grape, and then trying to give them a cucumber for the same task later, right? The monkey they expect the reaction from has gotten cucumber consistently. The subject only ever observes other monkeys getting grapes for the same task the subject has been receiving cucumber for, or even no task at all. This is when the subject begins to protest, and presumably the subject has had drapes in the past, in order to know that it likes grapes more.

If it were merely protesting because it liked grapes more, then it should have protested from the get go, why only begin to protest when it sees others getting grapes? While before this point it was completely content with cucumbers?

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33. Comment #238073 by Sciros on August 27, 2008 at 2:49 pm

I can't believe this is so difficult to comprehend, but it explains how the nitwit researchers got funding for a study the result of which should have been clear to any half-decent primate researcher.

Mitchell, do you not get that the monkeys were unaware that the reward of a grape was even a possibility prior to seeing it given as a reward? This is a no-brainer!

The monkeys were doing a task and getting a reward (cucumber). They were not aware that a reward they liked more (grape) was an option to begin with. They then saw that a reward they like more (grape) was being awarded for that same task. They are intelligent enough to make the connection that if they perform that task there is a possibility they can get a grape. Subsequently, when they perform the task and do not get a grape they are not satisfied.

Now, given that I've basically re-stated exactly what happened, how on Earth can you say that a conclusion that they weren't satisfied "on grounds of fairness" is a valid one? There is no evidence whatsoever that this dissatisfaction is on any grounds other than desire for a better treat.

BillySands:
I propose an alternate hypothesis to "wanting fairness." My hypothesis is "they want a grape and do what they can think of to try and get one, including refusing a treat they like less." I submit that the evidence in the study does not favor your hypothesis over mine. I suggested an alternate experiment that will provide evidence in favor of one of these hypotheses and not the other. Until that experiment is carried out, to claim that this one provides evidence that monkeys have a sense of "justice" is bad science.

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