Felix Warneken, is a scientist at the Max Planck Institute.
Felix Warneken was in a tough spot. While hanging laundry, he had "accidentally" dropped a clothespin out of reach. Stretch as he might, he couldn’t grab it.
He even cried out, "My pin!"
A young chimpanzee sitting nearby picked up on Warneken’s distress and retrieved the clothespin for him.
Since the chimp received no reward, or even a "thank you," this experiment indicates chimps can be altruistic, a quality many scientists thought only humans possessed.
Interestingly, if Warneken threw the pin deliberately, neither chimps or humans would pick it up. They only retrieved it if they could infer that Warneken needed it to complete his task.
Researchers placed a food tray outside the chimp’s cage. Pulling on a both ends of a rope attached to the tray was the only way to bring the food within reach. But the ends were so far apart that the chimp had to enlist a helper.
"The experiments show that chimpanzees spontaneously recognize that when they are faced with a problem they cannot solve on their own they need to recruit help," said study coauthor Brian Hare of the Max Planck Institute.
The chimps quickly figured out which chimp was best at rope-tugging and selected the expert more frequently
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