Food sharing is linked to urinary oxytocin levels and bonding in related and unrelated wild chimpanzees

Wittig, Roman M.; Crockford, Catherine; Deschner, Tobias; Langergraber, Kevin E.; Ziegler, Toni E.; Zuberbühler, Klaus

doi:10.1098/rspb.2013.3096

Cited by 189 publications

(212 citation statements)

References 83 publications

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“…However, if the prosocial option were only used to motivate future assistance, subjects' behaviors should have been the same in the RA and NRA conditions in experiment 3. A more probable explanation is instead that chimpanzees' choices were mediated by affiliative reactions in response to their partner's cooperative efforts; this would correspond to theoretical accounts suggesting that chimpanzees may engage in some form of "emotional bookkeeping" such that individuals make social decisions based on emotional states associated with particular partners (14, 51, 52), which may also be consistent with empirical findings showing that chimpanzees show elevated oxytocin levels-a hormone involved in social bonding-in response to cooperative interactions (48,53), and this may mediate individuals' propensity to engage in cooperative activities with particular partners in the future. Hence, in the current experiments, subjects may have interpreted the partner's assistance (and thus her decision to deviate from a payoff-maximizing strategy) as an invitation to contribute to a mutually desirable cooperative outcome (54), triggering positive affect toward the partner and motivating reciprocation.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 71%

“…Given the careful counterbalancing scheme and as indicated by the session and trial number analysis, our findings cannot be explained by local enhancement, order effects, or learning. Moreover, previous research has demonstrated the importance of stable social bonds in primate cooperation (48)(49)(50). In the current experiments, however, increases in prosocial choices after receiving risky assistance were highly consistent across subjects who differed in rank and their social relationship with the partner (Table S2).…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 42%

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Chimpanzees return favors at a personal cost

Schmelz

Grueneisen

Kabalak

et al. 2017

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Humans regularly provide others with resources at a personal cost to themselves. Chimpanzees engage in some cooperative behaviors in the wild as well, but their motivational underpinnings are unclear. In three experiments, chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) always chose between an option delivering food both to themselves and a partner and one delivering food only to themselves. In one condition, a conspecific partner had just previously taken a personal risk to make this choice available. In another condition, no assistance from the partner preceded the subject’s decision. Chimpanzees made significantly more prosocial choices after receiving their partner’s assistance than when no assistance was given (experiment 1) and, crucially, this was the case even when choosing the prosocial option was materially costly for the subject (experiment 2). Moreover, subjects appeared sensitive to the risk of their partner’s assistance and chose prosocially more often when their partner risked losing food by helping (experiment 3). These findings demonstrate experimentally that chimpanzees are willing to incur a material cost to deliver rewards to a conspecific, but only if that conspecific previously assisted them, and particularly when this assistance was risky. Some key motivations involved in human cooperation thus may have deeper phylogenetic roots than previously suspected

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 71%

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 42%

Chimpanzees return favors at a personal cost

Schmelz

Grueneisen

Kabalak

et al. 2017

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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“…Evidently, grooming with a close friend or relative is more emotionally rewarding than engaging in the same behaviour with a less preferred partner. Chimpanzees also exhibit elevated OT levels after sharing food [113]. In healthy humans, inhaling OT, which translocates the peptide into the brain, increases trust and prosocial behaviour [114,115].…”

Section: Neuromodulatory Sources Of Variation In Cooperative Potentialmentioning

confidence: 99%

Adaptations for social cognition in the primate brain

Platt

Seyfarth

Cheney

2016

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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One contribution of 18 to a theme issue 'The evolution of cooperation based on direct fitness benefits'. Studies of the factors affecting reproductive success in group-living monkeys have traditionally focused on competitive traits, like the acquisition of high dominance rank. Recent research, however, indicates that the ability to form cooperative social bonds has an equally strong effect on fitness. Two implications follow. First, strong social bonds make individuals' fitness interdependent and the 'free-rider' problem disappears. Second, individuals must make adaptive choices that balance competition and cooperation-often with the same partners. The proximate mechanisms underlying these behaviours are only just beginning to be understood. Recent results from cognitive and systems neuroscience provide us some evidence that many social and nonsocial decisions are mediated ultimately by abstract, domain-general neural mechanisms. However, other populations of neurons in the orbitofrontal cortex, striatum, amygdala and parietal cortex specifically encode the type, importance and value of social information. Whether these specialized populations of neurons arise by selection or through developmental plasticity in response to the challenges of social life remains unknown. Many brain areas are homologous and show similar patterns of activity in human and nonhuman primates. In both groups, cortical activity is modulated by hormones like oxytocin and by the action of certain genes that may affect individual differences in behaviour. Taken together, results suggest that differences in cooperation between the two groups are a matter of degree rather than constituting a fundamental, qualitative distinction.

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“…We conducted focal animal sampling (23) for 20 adult male and female chimpanzees of two neighboring groups, and measured the oxytocin concentration of urine samples from all individuals using an established method to sample specific events (19,20).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These parallels highlight key features shared by chimpanzee and human group defense and intergroup conflict (14). Also similar to humans, the oxytocinergic system in chimpanzees is involved in prosocial and cooperative behavior between both kin and nonkin group members, such as grooming (19) and food sharing (20), suggesting parallels in oxytocinergic system involvement between humans and chimpanzees.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Oxytocin reactivity during intergroup conflict in wild chimpanzees

Samuni

Preis

Mundry

et al. 2016

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Intergroup conflict is evident throughout the history of our species, ubiquitous across human societies, and considered crucial for the evolution of humans' large-scale cooperative nature. Like humans, chimpanzee societies exhibit intragroup coordination and coalitionary support during violent intergroup conflicts. In both species, cooperation among group members is essential for individuals to gain access to benefits from engaging in intergroup conflict. Studies suggest that a contributive mechanism regulating in-group cooperation during intergroup conflicts in humans involves the neuropeptide hormone oxytocin, known to influence trust, coordination, and social cognition, although evidence from natural settings is lacking. Here, applying a noninvasive method, we investigate oxytocinergic system involvement during natural intergroup conflicts in wild chimpanzees. We found that chimpanzees of both sexes had significantly higher urinary oxytocin levels immediately before and during intergroup conflict compared with controls. Also, elevated hormone levels were linked with greater cohesion during intergroup conflicts, rather than with the level of potential threat posed by rival groups, intragroup affiliative social interactions, or coordinated behavior alone. Thus, the oxytocinergic system, potentially engendering cohesion and cooperation when facing an out-group threat, may not be uniquely human but rather a mechanism with evolutionary roots shared by our last common ancestor with chimpanzees, likely expediting fitness gains during intergroup conflict.Pan troglodytes | cooperation | group cohesion | neuropeptide | parochial altruism R ecent evolutionary models suggest that parochial altruism,

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Food sharing is linked to urinary oxytocin levels and bonding in related and unrelated wild chimpanzees

Cited by 189 publications

References 83 publications

Chimpanzees return favors at a personal cost

Chimpanzees return favors at a personal cost

Adaptations for social cognition in the primate brain

Oxytocin reactivity during intergroup conflict in wild chimpanzees

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