Chimpanzees are not precisely well known for their compassionate nature , with multiple accounts of brute fighting , war , and infanticide . But while researchers found that the grade of what they deal to be empathy ranged from individual to individual , some apes consistently comfort others during almost a decade of report . This suggested to the researchers that these chimp just have more compassionate personality .
Whether or not other animals , and peculiarly Pan troglodytes , can exhibit empathy has always been a bit of a litigious subject area . Various observations indicate that copycat can indeed empathise with others , from an adult Pan troglodytes " adopting " avulnerable genet kittento the involuntarymimicking of pupil sizebetween mathematical group mates .
Yet few have deal to analyze a group of Pan troglodytes over a prolonged time period of time while also keeping tab on which ape exhibit empathetic behavior as a personality type . “ It is rare that apes are followed over enough time to establish the stability of traits , such as empathy , ” explains Professor Frans de Waal , co - author of the study , in a statement . “ We now know that , like us , they have substantial temperamental divergence in this gaze . ”
The researchers studied a group of 44 Pan troglodytes at Yerkes National Primate Research Center , Atlanta , and published their results in Nature Communications . During this flow of clip , they observed how the apes responded to each other after difference arose within the community . Specifically , they look at how the ape that were not require in the disputes comforted those that were in distress once the fight had ended , in what is experience as “ consolation behaviour ” .
By psychoanalyse over 3,000 conflict that make out up within the community over the eight long time , they were able to track whether or not those display of consolation behavior were simply one - off displays of empathy or if the same apes systematically comforted those in distress over a longer geological period of sentence . This way , they were able to see if some apes merely had more empathetic personalities than others .
The researchers found that consolation trend remained stable in individual apes over the study and , even more notably , that they remained unchanging as apes crossed developmental stage ( for example as the infants grew up to become adults ) . This , the writer indicate , shows that the empathetic behavior seems to be a hearty personality trait all of its own . This is important because empathy had antecedently been explain by social relationships between ape , not as a stable trait in and of itself .
The findings of the survey parallel observance seen in homo , suggesting that once again our two species are more alike than we previously think .
