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Chimps are Altruistic, Says Research

Published August 13, 2011 in Love For Earthlings, What's New |
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Emory University researchers say the results of their study show chimps are inherently altruistic. They trained a group of chimps to recognize tokens that were of two colours. One colour could be traded for food just for one chimp, and the other was for one chimp and another. The researchers observed almost 70 percent of the time a female chimp would choose the token which provided food for herself and one other chimp.

While this research observation might not sound too ground-breaking to some, it actually contradicts previous studies which supposedly showed chimps were selfish creatures by default. The old view was that chimps were altruistic when pressured, and would not share or look out for others unless pressure was applied. Field observations noted chimps in the wild did make altruistic actions, but research studies largely did not include this view. The Emory researchers designed a Prosocial Choice Test to simplify some of the previous approaches, which reportedly produced some unclear results.

Their design actually sounds somewhat like a research study that provided opportunities to observe elephants and show how they can cooperate to achieve a goal – usually obtaining food. They also cooperate to do other things, such as protect a baby elephant from a potential predator attack. Check out a video of adult elephants gathering to help a baby elephant stuck in a muddy stream.

“It isn’t just chimps and elephants that are capable of empathy. Since empathy is an old mammalian trait, there is no reason why the sort of altruism we describe should be unique for the primates. I expect it will be found in dogs and rats. We, and others, found it previously in monkeys: capuchin monkeys, marmosets, tamarins,” said Frans de Waal, one of the researchers. (Source:IBtimes.com)

Another chimp study this year found more evidence that chimps experience empathy. Some people do not like to consider the possibility of empathy or emotion becoming part of animals’ lives, because they adhere to the belief only humans have them, subscribing to evidence of human superiority. Science is gradually overturning that outdated belief.

Image Credit: Thomas Lersch / Wiki Commons

Adapted from an article by Jake R.

Modern Polar Bears Orginated in Ireland

Published July 25, 2011 in Love For Earthlings |
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Brown Bears and Polar Bears Met Often during Last 100,000 Years
A team of scientists discovered that the female ancestor to all modern polar bears was actually a species of brown bear living in Britain and Ireland just before the last ice age. The hybridization occurred between 20,000 and 50,000 years ago, and the species of brown bear has been extinct for the last 9,000 years.

According to the press release, “Beth Shapiro, the Shaffer Associate Professor of Biology at Penn State University and one of the team’s leaders, explained that climate changes affecting the North Atlantic ice sheet probably gave rise to periodic overlaps in bear habitats. These overlaps then led to hybridization, or interbreeding — an event that caused maternal DNA from brown bears to be introduced into polar bears.”

Researchers once thought that the female ancestor of polar bears lived about 14,000 years ago on the Alaskan islands of Admiralty, Baranof, and Chichagof. However, the new evidence collected from studying 242 brown bear and polar bear mitochondrial lineages (tracing genetic history from the mother’s side) from the last 120,000 years shows it happened tens of thousands of years earlier, and on a different part of the planet.

Hybridization Could Help Polar Bears Survive Environmental Changes
While polar bears and brown bears are strikingly different in their physical appearance, their ancestry seems to be intricately linked — and could be intermingled again as melting ice brings brown bears and polar bears back into contact with one another, creating hybrids of grizzlies and polar bears called “growler bears” or “pizzly bears.”

Apparently the hybridization we’ve witnessed recently due to global climate change and a reduction of sea ice has happened often over the last 100,000 years as warming and cooling cycles brought the bears in and out of contact with one another.

Shapiro states that a thorough understanding of the genetic history of polar bears as well as previous responses to environmental changes could conservationists form strategies for keeping polar bears from disappearing altogether.

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