Myopic Astronomer's Kaleidoscope

By Helen Briggs BBC News science reporter

These children are so young - they still wear diapers and are barely able to use language, but they already show helping behaviour Felix Warneken

Infants as young as 18 months show altruistic behaviour, suggesting humans have a natural tendency to be helpful, German researchers have discovered.

In experiments reported in the journal Science, toddlers helped strangers complete tasks such as stacking books.

Young chimps did the same, providing the first evidence of altruism in non human primates.

Altruism may have evolved six million years ago in the common ancestor of chimps and humans, the study suggests.

The experimenters performed simple tasks like dropping a clothes peg out of reach while hanging clothes on a line, or mis-stacking a pile of books.

Nearly all of the group of 24 18-month-olds helped by picking up the peg or the book, usually in the first 10 seconds of the experiment.

They only did this if they believed the researcher needed the object to complete the task - if it was thrown on the ground deliberately, they didn't pick it up.

"The results were astonishing because these children are so young - they still wear diapers and are barely able to use language, but they already show helping behaviour," said Felix Warneken.

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The tasks were repeated with three young chimpanzees that had been raised in captivity. The chimps didn not help in more complex tasks such as the box experiment, but did assist the human looking after them in simple tasks such as reaching for a lost object.

"Children and chimpanzees are both willing to help, but they appear to differ in their ability to interpret the other's need for help in different situations," the two researchers write in Science.

Ugandan study

Further evidence of chimps' ability to cooperate was revealed in a separate study published in the same edition of the scientific journal.

Alicia Melis at the Ngamba Island Chimpanzee Sanctuary in Uganda found that chimps recognised when collaboration was necessary and chose the best partner to work with. The chimps had to cooperate in reaching a food tray by pulling two ends of a rope at the same time....

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# posted by myopic astronomer : 1:15 PM