BBC News – Bonobos opt to share their food

BBC News – Bonobos opt to share their food.

A recent Current Biology article entitled “Bonobos voluntarily share their own food with others” made the very interesting observation that Bonobos prefer to share their food, even if they do not have to.  In their cautious conclusion, the authors argued in their abstract:

We gave unrelated bonobos the choice of either monopolizing food or actively sharing: we found that bonobos preferred to release a recipient from an adjacent room and feed together instead of eating all the food alone. Thus, food sharing in bonobos does not depend on kinship or harassment and suggests our own species’ propensity for voluntary food sharing is not unique among the apes

This is a pretty amazing observation adding to the evidence that altruistic behavior is ingrained in our biological selves and not unique to our species.  It is premature to make very generalistic conclusions about this.  However, it is still good fodder for a more biologically contextualized moral discourse, as well as a possible ethical code that is not constructed on competition.

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