Vocal signals facilitate cooperative hunting in wild chimpanzees

Mine, Joseph G.; Slocombe, Katie E.; Willems, Erik P.; Gilby, Ian C.; Yu, Miranda; Thompson, Melissa Emery; Muller, Martin N.; Wrangham, Richard W.; Townsend, Simon W.; Machanda, Zarin

doi:10.1126/sciadv.abo5553

Cited by 15 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 57 publications

(104 reference statements)

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“…Cooperation may have been crucial to support the nutritional needs of juveniles and mothers with infants. Collective hunting occurs in chimpanzees [ 65 ] and bonobos [ 66 ]. Food sharing occurs in chimpanzees and bonobos, but sharing among unrelated individuals appears to occur more often in bonobos, with female bonobos in particular sharing with other females and with infants, though male bonobos also share with females [ 67 ].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Human cooperation and evolutionary transitions in individuality

Townsend

Ferraro

Habecker

et al. 2023

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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A major evolutionary transition in individuality involves the formation of a cooperative group and the transformation of that group into an evolutionary entity. Human cooperation shares principles with those of multicellular organisms that have undergone transitions in individuality: division of labour, communication, and fitness interdependence. After the split from the last common ancestor of hominoids, early hominins adapted to an increasingly terrestrial niche for several million years. We posit that new challenges in this niche set in motion a positive feedback loop in selection pressure for cooperation that ratcheted coevolutionary changes in sociality, communication, brains, cognition, kin relations and technology, eventually resulting in egalitarian societies with suppressed competition and rapid cumulative culture. The increasing pace of information innovation and transmission became a key aspect of the evolutionary niche that enabled humans to become formidable cooperators with explosive population growth, the ability to cooperate and compete in groups of millions, and emergent social norms, e.g. private property. Despite considerable fitness interdependence, the rise of private property, in concert with population explosion and socioeconomic inequality, subverts potential transition of human groups into evolutionary entities due to resurgence of latent competition and conflict. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Human socio-cultural evolution in light of evolutionary transitions’.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Human cooperation and evolutionary transitions in individuality

Townsend

Ferraro

Habecker

et al. 2023

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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“…Cooperative–communicative abilities may have co-evolved in humans and the coevolutionary relationship between vocal communication and group-level co-operation is not unique to humans of the ape lineage, but likely existed in the last common ancestor with chimpanzees ( Mine et al, 2022 ).…”

Section: Hypothesismentioning

confidence: 99%

Testosterone, oxytocin and co-operation: A hypothesis for the origin and function of music

Fukui

Toyoshima²

2023

Front. Psychol.

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Since the time of Darwin, theories have been proposed on the origin and functions of music; however, the subject remains enigmatic. The literature shows that music is closely related to important human behaviours and abilities, namely, cognition, emotion, reward and sociality (co-operation, entrainment, empathy and altruism). Notably, studies have deduced that these behaviours are closely related to testosterone (T) and oxytocin (OXT). The association of music with important human behaviours and neurochemicals is closely related to the understanding of reproductive and social behaviours being unclear. In this paper, we describe the endocrinological functions of human social and musical behaviour and demonstrate its relationship to T and OXT. We then hypothesised that the emergence of music is associated with behavioural adaptations and emerged as humans socialised to ensure survival. Moreover, the proximal factor in the emergence of music is behavioural control (social tolerance) through the regulation of T and OXT, and the ultimate factor is group survival through co-operation. The “survival value” of music has rarely been approached from the perspective of musical behavioural endocrinology. This paper provides a new perspective on the origin and functions of music.

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“…It is the reverse, in fact (in line with Thomas and Kirby, 2018 's intuition): self-domestication was crucial to the development of central traits of our communicative system. Of course, cooperation and communication are linked, but there is evidence that the coevolutionary relationship between vocal communication and group-level cooperation is not unique to humans (Mine et al, 2022 ). Instead, the factors that facilitated self-domestication in our lineage must be looked for elsewhere.…”

Section: Linguistic/cognitive Phenotypesmentioning

confidence: 99%

What made us “hunter-gatherers of words”

Boeckx

2023

Front. Neurosci.

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This paper makes three interconnected claims: (i) the “human condition” cannot be captured by evolutionary narratives that reduce it to a recent ‘cognitive modernity', nor by narratives that eliminates all cognitive differences between us and out closest extinct relatives, (ii) signals from paleogenomics, especially coming from deserts of introgression but also from signatures of positive selection, point to the importance of mutations that impact neurodevelopment, plausibly leading to temperamental differences, which may impact cultural evolutionary trajectories in specific ways, and (iii) these trajectories are expected to affect the language phenotypes, modifying what is being learned and how it is put to use. In particular, I hypothesize that these different trajectories influence the development of symbolic systems, the flexible ways in which symbols combine, and the size and configurations of the communities in which these systems are put to use.

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Vocal signals facilitate cooperative hunting in wild chimpanzees

Cited by 15 publications

References 57 publications

Human cooperation and evolutionary transitions in individuality

Human cooperation and evolutionary transitions in individuality

Testosterone, oxytocin and co-operation: A hypothesis for the origin and function of music

What made us “hunter-gatherers of words”

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