Empathy, cooperation, fairness and reciprocity -- caring about the well-being of others seems like a very human trait. But Frans de Waal shares some surprising videos of behavioral tests, on primates and other mammals, that show how many of these moral traits all of us share.
CHIMPANZEES may learn from their elders to recognise plants with medicinal properties. But as with all evidence that primates self-medicate, the finding is controversial.
Between 1998 and 2009, John Mitani witnessed 18 murders firsthand, and found circumstantial evidence for three more. But no police were ever called, for these killers were all chimpanzees, from the Ngogo community in Uganda’s Kibale National Park.
Most of the linguistic functions in humans are controlled by the left cerebral hemisphere. A new study of captive chimpanzees suggests that this "hemispheric lateralization" for language may have its evolutionary roots in the gestural communication of our common ancestors.
