Skip to navigation | Skip to content  Selfish chimps don't give
a monkey's   No, I don't think I'll give you my bananas (Image:
iStockphoto)  Chimpanzees share many traits with humans but
altruism, it seems, is not one of them, scientists say.
Although chimps live in social groups and co-operate and hunt
together, when it comes to helping non-related group members,
they don't put up with any monkey business.  When given the
opportunity to help themselves and other chimps they often
choose the selfish option, scientists report in today's issue of
the journal Nature.  "This is the first experiment to show that
chimps don't share the same concern for the welfare of others as
do humans, who routinely donate blood ... volunteer for military
duty and perform other acts that benefit perfect strangers,"
says Professor Joan Silk, a US anthropologist at the University
of California, Los Angeles.  To test how altruistic chimps are,
Silk and her colleagues studied the behaviour of two separate
groups of chimps in captiv