Apes Empathize With Each Other Like Humans, Orphans Act Out

More and more studies seem to reestablish the close bond that great apes and humans have. A new report shows that bonobos, one of our closest relatives in the animal kingdom, deals with its emotions similarly to humans.

Researchers observing bonobos at a bonobo sanctuary near the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo found that the apes tended to empathize with fellow species members if they had gone through a similar trauma themselves. In laymen's terms: they were able to feel another ape's pain and they then attempted to mitigate the emotional stress through acts such as hugging or kissing.

"Animal emotions have long been scientifically taboo," said Frans de Waal from the Living Links Center at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center. "By measuring the expression of distress and arousal in great apes, and how they cope, we were able to confirm that efficient emotion regulation is an essential part of empathy. Empathy allows great apes and humans to absorb the distress of others without getting overly distressed themselves."

While many of the emotional traumas could be linked to aggressive forms of behavior such as fights, some were more deep-seeded, like those of an orphan bonobo.

"Compared to peers reared by their own mothers, the orphans have difficulty managing emotional arousal," said Zanna Clay, a researcher on the study. "They would be very upset, screaming for minutes after a fight compared to mother-reared juveniles, who would snap out of it in seconds."

The researchers believe this emotional gap, which can be seen in human orphans as well, reinforces how similar humans are with their relatives, no matter how many skyscrapers one species builds over the other.

"This makes the species an ideal candidate for psychological comparisons. Any fundamental similarity between humans and bonobos probably traces back to their last common ancestor, which lived around six million years ago," explained de Waal.

You can read the full published study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.