Department of Anthropology, University of Texas at Austin, 2201 Speedway Stop C3200, Austin, TX, 78712, USA.
Department of Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA.
Primates. 2021 Sep;62(5):697-702. doi: 10.1007/s10329-021-00925-7. Epub 2021 Jul 1.
Caring for others is a key feature of human behavior. Mothers, fathers, siblings, grandparents, and other group members provide care in the form of provisioning, protection, and first aid. To what extent is other-regarding behavior present in our primate relatives? Here we describe an unusual incident of other-regarding behavior toward an injured juvenile female chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) at Ngogo in Kibale National Park, Uganda. After the juvenile received a mild head wound from an adult female, several adolescent and juvenile chimpanzees gathered to touch, lick, and peer at the wound. One adolescent male wiped a leaf across the cut. Another adolescent male later groomed the injured female and briefly carried her. Across a 5-year period, we observed only three other instances of other-directed wound care in chimpanzees, occurring in 4% (4/100) of cases in which we observed individuals with fresh wounds, and 57 other instances of allomaternal carrying. Despite the infrequency of such behaviors, our study adds another chimpanzee field site to the list of those where other-directed wound care has been observed. Observations from wild chimpanzees provide insight into empathy and may inform our understanding of the evolution of other-regarding behavior in humans.
关爱他人是人类行为的一个关键特征。母亲、父亲、兄弟姐妹、祖父母和其他群体成员以提供物资、保护和急救的形式提供关爱。我们的灵长类近亲中有多大程度的利他行为？在这里，我们描述了乌干达基巴莱国家公园恩戈戈一个不寻常的利他行为事件，一只受伤的幼年雌性黑猩猩（Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii）受到了一只成年雌性黑猩猩的轻微头部创伤。在受到攻击后，几只青少年和幼年黑猩猩聚集在一起，触摸、舔舐和注视伤口。一只青少年雄性用树叶擦拭伤口。另一只青少年雄性后来为受伤的雌性梳理毛发，并短暂地携带她。在 5 年的时间里，我们只观察到另外三起针对受伤的同类的护理行为，占我们观察到有新鲜伤口的个体的 4%（4/100），而其他 57 起都是母婴携带。尽管这种行为很少见，但我们的研究将另一个黑猩猩野外研究地点添加到了观察到同类定向伤口护理的地点列表中。对野生黑猩猩的观察为同理心提供了深入了解，并可能有助于我们理解人类利他行为的进化。
