Parochial cooperation in wild chimpanzees: a model to explain the evolution of parochial altruism
Publication Date
2022-05-23Journal Title
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
ISSN
0962-8436
Publisher
The Royal Society
Volume
377
Issue
1851
Language
en
Type
Article
This Version
AO
VoR
Metadata
Show full item recordCitation
Lemoine, S. R., Samuni, L., Crockford, C., & Wittig, R. M. (2022). Parochial cooperation in wild chimpanzees: a model to explain the evolution of parochial altruism. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 377 (1851) https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2021.0149
Description
Funder: Max-Planck-Gesellschaft; Id: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100004189
Abstract
<jats:p>
Parochial altruism, taking individual costs to benefit the in-group and harm the out-group, has been proposed as one of the mechanisms underlying the human ability of large-scale cooperation. How parochial altruism has evolved remains unclear. In this review paper, we formulate a parochial cooperation model in small-scale groups and examine the model in wild chimpanzees. As suggested for human parochial altruism, we review evidence that the oxytocinergic system and in-group cooperation and cohesion during out-group threat are integral parts of chimpanzee collective action during intergroup competition. We expand this model by suggesting that chimpanzee parochial cooperation is supported by the social structure of chimpanzee groups which enables repeated interaction history and established social ties between co-operators. We discuss in detail the role of the oxytocinergic system in supporting parochial cooperation, a pathway that appears integral already in chimpanzees. The reviewed evidence suggests that prerequisites of human parochial altruism were probably present in the last common ancestor between
<jats:italic>Pan</jats:italic>
and
<jats:italic>Homo</jats:italic>
.
</jats:p>
<jats:p>This article is part of the theme issue ‘Intergroup conflict across taxa’.</jats:p>
Keywords
ARTICLES, Review articles, human evolution, primates, social ties, oxytocin, in-group out-group, parochial cooperation model
Identifiers
rstb20210149
External DOI: https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2021.0149
This record's URL: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/335729
Rights
Licence:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Statistics
Total file downloads (since January 2020). For more information on metrics see the
IRUS guide.