Concerning a study of bonobo altruism, this was in The New York Times recently:
The subjects were all orphaned bonobos at the Lola ya Bonobo sanctuary in the Democratic Republic of Congo. In one phase of the study, bonobos were given a pile of food, then given the opportunity to release a stranger or a group mate (or both) from other rooms.
The bonobos chose to release strangers and share their food. Not only that, but the just-released bonobo would then release the third.
“This was shocking to us because chimpanzees are so xenophobic,” Mr. Tan said. “They won’t approach a stranger unless they outnumber them.”
The apes did have a limit — they would not share their own food when no social interaction was involved.
They were, however, willing to help a stranger get food even without social interaction. Mr. Tan compared this to certain human acts of kindness.
Think about this. These are our primate cousins. We share a common ancestor with both of them, and chimps are xenophobic while bonobos are open. Talk about red state/blue state!
And think about being a participant in this experiment. You’ve got a feast before you all to yourself (a pile of food). And you can see that your rivals for the food are locked away from you in other rooms. You are utterly secure.
The rational response is to say “Sod them” and chow away.
But a bonobo doesn’t do this. Just like a liberal is a humanist, a bonobo is a bonoboist: she appears to feel bad for her fellow bonobos qua bonobos, imagining what it’s like to be locked away in a room without food. And she doesn’t like to eat alone. She wants company when eating. So she unlocks her door and lets her neighbor in. And then that neighbor unlocks other doors and invites in others. Pretty soon they’ve got a love-in, like at the end of It’s a Wonderful Life.
Meanwhile, the xenophobic chimp, in her red alarm state, dines alone:
I’m a bit conflicted about the bonobo-chimp divide. I find, for example, the above book cover sad, but understandable. All cells have walls, but those walls also have to be permeable, letting the right amount of good things in while keeping the right amount of bad things out. Otherwise, the cell becomes a prison and the organism dies. So I suppose you’ve got to have both the bonobo and the chimp in you to be human. It’s the tension between Dionysus and Apollo.
Still, the below scene of bonobos in full bonobo mode can make me cry.