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Chimpanzee Autarky

BACKGROUND: Economists believe that barter is the ultimate cause of social wealth—and even much of our human culture—yet little is known about the evolution and development of such behavior. It is useful to examine the circumstances under which other species will or will not barter to more fully und...

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Autores principales: Brosnan, Sarah F., Grady, Mark F., Lambeth, Susan P., Schapiro, Steven J., Beran, Michael J.
Formato: Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2008
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2204064/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18231604
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0001518
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author Brosnan, Sarah F.
Grady, Mark F.
Lambeth, Susan P.
Schapiro, Steven J.
Beran, Michael J.
author_facet Brosnan, Sarah F.
Grady, Mark F.
Lambeth, Susan P.
Schapiro, Steven J.
Beran, Michael J.
author_sort Brosnan, Sarah F.
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Economists believe that barter is the ultimate cause of social wealth—and even much of our human culture—yet little is known about the evolution and development of such behavior. It is useful to examine the circumstances under which other species will or will not barter to more fully understand the phenomenon. Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) are an interesting test case as they are an intelligent species, closely related to humans, and known to participate in reciprocal interactions and token economies with humans, yet they have not spontaneously developed costly barter. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPLE FINDINGS: Although chimpanzees do engage in noncostly barter, in which otherwise value-less tokens are exchanged for food, this lack of risk is not typical of human barter. Thus, we systematically examined barter in chimpanzees to ascertain under what circumstances chimpanzees will engage in costly barter of commodities, that is, trading food items for other food items with a human experimenter. We found that chimpanzees do barter, relinquishing lower value items to obtain higher value items (and not the reverse). However, they do not trade in all beneficial situations, maintaining possession of less preferred items when the relative gains they stand to make are small. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Two potential explanations for this puzzling behavior are that chimpanzees lack ownership norms, and thus have limited opportunity to benefit from the gains of trade, and that chimpanzees' risk of defection is sufficiently high that large gains must be imminent to justify the risk. Understanding the conditions that support barter in chimpanzees may increase understanding of situations in which humans, too, do not maximize their gains.
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spelling pubmed-22040642008-01-30 Chimpanzee Autarky Brosnan, Sarah F. Grady, Mark F. Lambeth, Susan P. Schapiro, Steven J. Beran, Michael J. PLoS One Research Article BACKGROUND: Economists believe that barter is the ultimate cause of social wealth—and even much of our human culture—yet little is known about the evolution and development of such behavior. It is useful to examine the circumstances under which other species will or will not barter to more fully understand the phenomenon. Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) are an interesting test case as they are an intelligent species, closely related to humans, and known to participate in reciprocal interactions and token economies with humans, yet they have not spontaneously developed costly barter. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPLE FINDINGS: Although chimpanzees do engage in noncostly barter, in which otherwise value-less tokens are exchanged for food, this lack of risk is not typical of human barter. Thus, we systematically examined barter in chimpanzees to ascertain under what circumstances chimpanzees will engage in costly barter of commodities, that is, trading food items for other food items with a human experimenter. We found that chimpanzees do barter, relinquishing lower value items to obtain higher value items (and not the reverse). However, they do not trade in all beneficial situations, maintaining possession of less preferred items when the relative gains they stand to make are small. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Two potential explanations for this puzzling behavior are that chimpanzees lack ownership norms, and thus have limited opportunity to benefit from the gains of trade, and that chimpanzees' risk of defection is sufficiently high that large gains must be imminent to justify the risk. Understanding the conditions that support barter in chimpanzees may increase understanding of situations in which humans, too, do not maximize their gains. Public Library of Science 2008-01-30 /pmc/articles/PMC2204064/ /pubmed/18231604 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0001518 Text en Brosnan et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Brosnan, Sarah F.
Grady, Mark F.
Lambeth, Susan P.
Schapiro, Steven J.
Beran, Michael J.
Chimpanzee Autarky
title Chimpanzee Autarky
title_full Chimpanzee Autarky
title_fullStr Chimpanzee Autarky
title_full_unstemmed Chimpanzee Autarky
title_short Chimpanzee Autarky
title_sort chimpanzee autarky
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2204064/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18231604
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0001518
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