They reached this conclusion after conducting several experiments with bonobos in their natural habitats. In one of them, carried out near Kinshasa, in the Congo, a primate was offered the opportunity to devour a mountain of food for himself only while one of his companions watched him from behind a door. In trials with different individuals, bonobos always chose to open the door and share the feast. "A chimpanzee would never do this voluntarily," explains Brian Hare, Professor of Evolutionary Anthropology at Duke University. Chimpanzees help each other, but under no circumstances do they share their food? , especially adults, he points out.
Hare claims that bonobos live in a kind of "Peter Pan world" and that they " never grow up ." Richard Weangham, a Harvard anthropologist and co-author of the study, attributes this childlike generosity to the abundance of food in the environment where they live, south of the Congo River, a privileged environment where they do not even have to compete with gorillas, as chimpanzees do.
