Chimps and bonobos bond over binge-worthy TV too
Embargoed until:
Publicly released:
2019-07-17 09:01
Sharing experiences – like watching movies or playing board games together – makes us socially closer, and now we know this experience isn’t uniquely human. International researchers sat down 17 chimps and seven bonobos to watch a video of a baby chimp at play in three different situations - with a human, with another ape, or on their own - and found they were more social with their partner after watching the video. These results show that bonding through shared experiences could have deeper evolutionary roots than we initially thought, the researchers say.
Journal/conference: Proceedings B
Link to research (DOI): 10.1098/rspb.2019.0488
Organisation/s: Duke University, USA
Funder: The authors received no funding for this study.
Media Release
From: The Royal Society
Visually attending to a video together facilitates great ape social closeness
Humans create social closeness with others through social activities in which they align their mental states towards a stimulus, such as playing board games or watching a movie together. Although these behaviors seem uniquely human, it is unclear if the underlying psychology is present in other species as well. We show that great apes who watched a video with a human or conspecific behaved more socially towards their partner afterwards. This suggest that one of the most basic mechanisms of human social bonding - feeling closer to those with whom we attend together – has deeper evolutionary roots than previously suspected.
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