Fig 2 - uploaded by Takeshi Furuichi
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A female (KM) of E1 group holds a metallic wire that had ensnared the fingers of her right hand. Although this instance was photographed in 1984, it features the same type of snare described in this study
Source publication
This is the first report to demonstrate that a large mixed-sex party of bonobos travelled a long distance to return to the location of a snare apparently to search for a member that had been caught in it. An adult male was caught in a metallic snare in a swamp forest at Wamba, Luo Scientific Reserve, Democratic Republic of the Congo. After he escap...
Contexts in source publication
Context 1
... stick to confirm whether he was still alive, and he stood up. TK and SN barked and shook branches to threaten us. The looped metallic wire had ensnared the second to fifth fingers of his left hand. At the other end of its 30-cm extension, the wire was connected to a 30-cm stick that was a part of the sapling to which the wire had been attached (Fig. 2). The stick was stuck in lianas, which prevented ML from moving. TK unfastened the stick from the liana, and ML climbed up about 4 m on an adjacent small ...
Context 2
... or hands of other animals have also been observed in both bonobos and chimpanzees. Furuichi observed an instance in which at least two adult and two adolescent females and one infant in the E1 group of bonobos reached out their hands to, smelled, and licked the wounds of, another adult female (KM), whose fingers were ensnared in metallic wire (Fig. 2). One of the females reached for the stick to remove it, but KM fled from her, likely because of the pain (Furuichi 1988). Mulavwa observed another instance in E1 group, in which a female (SL) released her infant male (SB) from a snare made from nylon by cutting the vine that connected the nylon snare to a sapling (Mulavwa, personal ...
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Citations
... In addition, Hirata (2009) has outlined a variety of instances where chimpanzee mothers have rescued infants from dangerous circumstances by observing their behaviour and responding accordingly. There are also case reports in both wild bonobos and chimpanzees where they have helped to remove snares from trapped groupmates [bonobos (Tokuyama et al., 2012); chimpanzees (Amati, Babweteera & Wittig, 2008)]. ...
Empathy is a complex, multi‐dimensional capacity that facilitates the sharing and understanding of others' emotions. As our closest living relatives, bonobos ( Pan paniscus ) and chimpanzees ( P. troglodytes ) provide an opportunity to explore the origins of hominin social cognition, including empathy. Despite certain assumptions that bonobos and chimpanzees may differ empathically, these species appear to overlap considerably in certain socio‐emotional responses related to empathy. However, few studies have systematically tested for species variation in Pan empathic or socio‐emotional tendencies. To address this, we synthesise the growing literature on Pan empathy to inform our understanding of the selection pressures that may underlie the evolution of hominin empathy, and its expression in our last common ancestor. As bonobos and chimpanzees show overlaps in their expression of complex socio‐emotional phenomena such as empathy, we propose that group comparisons may be as or more meaningful than species comparisons when it comes to understanding the evolutionary pressures for such behaviour. Furthermore, key differences, such as how humans and Pan communicate, appear to distinguish how we experience empathy compared to our closest living relatives.
... Attempts to free individuals imprisoned in a cage were also described in wild boars [43] and in domestic dogs coming at the rescue of trapped humans [50,51]. Various wild living mammals were also observed to provide assistance to individuals entrapped in snares (chimpanzees: [52,53]), stuck in water, mud or ditches (African elephants: [54]), or injured (macaques: [55], African elephants: [54,56], bootlenose dolphins: [57]). Rescue behaviour of vertebrates may also involve removal of foreign bodies from the body surface of other individuals (baboons: [58,59], macaques: [55,60], impalas: [61], African elephants: [54], and two bird species, the Seychelles warbler Acrocephalus sechellensis [62] and the Australian magpie Gymnorhina tibicens [63]). ...
Ant rescue behaviour belongs to the most interesting subcategories of prosocial and altruistic behaviour encountered in the animal world. Several studies suggested that ants are able to identify what exactly restrains the movements of another individual and to direct their rescue behaviour precisely to that object. To shed more light on the question how precise is the identifi-cation of the source of restraint of another ant, we investigated rescue behaviour of workers of the red wood ant Formica polyctena using a new version of an artificial snare bioassay in which a nestmate victim was bearing on its body two wire loops, one placed on the petiole and acting as a snare, and an additional one on the leg. The tested ants did not direct preferentially their rescue behaviour to the snare. Moreover, the overall strategy adopted by the most active rescuers was not limited to precisely targeted rescue attempts directed to the snare, but consisted of attempts to find a solution to the victim’s problem through frequent trial-and-error switching between various subcategories of rescue behaviour. These findings highlight the importance of precise identifica-tion of cognitive processes and overall behavioural strategies for better understanding of causal factors underlying animal helping behaviour.
... Given their cognitive abilities, primates for example, have been suggested to have learned the potential danger of snares and have been recorded to deactivate snares safely (Ohashi and Matsuzawa, 2011;Sugiyama, 2011). Particularly, chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and bonobos (Pan paniscus) were observed to remove snares from limbs of affected conspecifics (Amati et al., 2008;Boesch and Boesch-Achermann, 2000;Tokuyama et al., 2012). In addition, mountain gorillas (Gorilla beringei) have been recorded to exhibit snare awareness behaviour including avoidance, displays near the traps, and biting group members who approach snares (Williamson, 2005). ...
... Cases of rescue behavior are also known in taxa other than ants. These taxa include numerous primate species [59][60][61][62][63][64][65][66][67], other mammals [68][69][70][71][72][73] and, to date, a single bird species [74]. The occurrence of rescue actions in such a diverse group of taxa speaks to the generality of the phenomenon and its prevalent importance. ...
Altruism is defined as an action that decreases the lifetime direct fitness of an actor and benefits one or more recipients. This phenomenon, which is generally difficult to understand and explain, requires special research attention. The subject of this review, rescue, is a type of altruistic behavior in which the actor puts itself at risk to save another individual, the recipient, that is in danger. The highest numbers of published empirical works have been devoted to rescue behavior in ants and they have enormous potential for further study. We review studies devoted to the subject and group them into four main areas of research on ant rescue actions: (1) variation in rescue behavior activity on a between-individual scale, (2) factors contributing to the evolution of rescue behavior on a between-species scale, (3) rescue behavior releaser signals and (4) rescue behavior benefits and costs. We highlight the progress in research on rescue behavior in ants, indicate that this behavior is probably much more common than previously thought yet thus far demonstrated in only a few species, and uncover research gaps and open questions that remain unexplored. We additionally point out some gaps in knowledge that become evident when research devoted to rescue behavior in rats, the second most studied group of animals in this context, is briefly overviewed. We hope to help navigate among studies on rescue behavior and provide the most up-to-date summary of the relevant literature. Moreover, we hope to encourage and facilitate researchers in behavioral ecology and other subdisciplines to further experimentally analyze rescue behavior, not only in ants but also in other taxa.
... Similarly to humans and chimpanzees, adoption in bonobos may be triggered by emotion, altruism, and/or their strong attraction to infants. Bonobos react emotionally to other individuals' pain and dissatisfaction, for example they give attention to emotional scenes, try to help injured individuals, and comfort distressed individuals 46,[77][78][79][80] . Additionally, females are strongly attracted by infants and kidnapping sometimes occurs 18,[81][82][83][84] . ...
Adoption, the act of taking another individual’s offspring and treating it as one’s own, is rare but widely observed in various mammal species and may increase the survival of adoptees. Adoption may also benefit adoptive mothers, for example they might care for close kin to gain indirect fitness or to learn caregiving behaviours. Here, we report two cases of a wild bonobo adopting an infant from a different social group, the first report of cross-group adoption in great apes. In one case, the adoptive mother was already a mother of two dependent offspring. In the other case, the adoptive mother was an old parous female whose own offspring had already emigrated into a different social group. The adoptive mothers provided various maternal care to the adoptees, such as carrying, grooming, nursing, and sharing food. No aggression was observed by group members towards the out-group adoptees. In both cases, adoptees had no maternal kin-relationship with their adoptive mothers. Both adoptive mothers already had experience of rearing their own offspring. Instead, these cases of adoption may have been driven by other evolutionary adaptive traits of bonobos, such as their strong attraction to infants and high tolerance towards immatures and out-group individuals.
... Tashiro et al., 2007]. Also, bonobos can become victims of snares intended for other game, sustain serious and potentially lethal wounds [Kano, 1984b;Tokuyama et al., 2012;Tokuyama, 2019]. Hunting persists throughout much of the bonobo range, including in areas that are protected Hart et al., 2008;Inogwabini & Omari, 2005;Reinartz, 2003;Tashiro et al., 2007;Van Krunkelsven et al., 2000]. ...
... Bonobos have been observed to return to the location of an injured group member (Tokuyama et al. 2012;Tokuyama 2019), suggesting that they may care for other injured members. In the current case also, bonobos returned repeatedly to the same location where the group member was dead, even after the corpse was buried, suggesting they care considerably for their dead and disappeared group members. ...
... Moreover, an adolescent male chimpanzee was observed to help carry an infant when the mother chimpanzee was injured (Pruetz 2011). Finally, an adult male chimpanzee was observed to help remove a snare from a trapped groupmate (Amati et al. 2008; also see Tokuyama et al. 2012 for a similar behavior in bonobos). ...
Previous studies have shown that humans experience negative emotions when seeing contextual cues of others’ pain, such as injury (i.e., empathic pain), even without observing behavioral expressions of distress. However, this phenomenon has not been examined in nonhuman primates. We tested six chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) to experimentally examine their reactions to others’ injury. First, we measured viewing responses using eye-tracking. Chimpanzees spontaneously attended to injured conspecifics more than non-injured conspecifics, but did not do so in a control condition in which images of injuries were scrambled while maintaining color information. Chimpanzees did not avoid viewing injuries at any point during stimulus presentation. Second, we used thermal imaging to investigate chimpanzees’ physiological responses to others’ injury. Previous studies reported that reduced nasal temperature is a characteristic of arousal, particularly arousal associated with negative valence. We presented chimpanzees with a realistic injury: a familiar human experimenter with a prosthetic wound and artificial running blood. Chimpanzees exhibited a greater nasal temperature reduction in response to injury compared with the control stimulus. Finally, chimpanzees were presented with a familiar experimenter who stabbed their (fake) thumb with a needle, with no running blood, a situation that may be more challenging in terms of understanding the cause of distress. Chimpanzees did not physiologically distinguish this condition from the control condition. These results suggest that chimpanzees inspect others’ injuries and become aroused by seeing injuries even without observing behavioral cues, but have difficulty doing so without explicit (or familiar) cues (i.e., open wound and blood).
... After Gai had become trapped, other bonobos might have left Gai in the afternoon of November 11 and then come back early in the morning of November 12. I have observed a very similar case in the same group in 2011 (Tokuyama et al. 2012). An adult male was caught in a snare. ...
... However, members of the group came to the place where Rb was staying, suggesting that they might have been searching for Rb and Rd. A similar case has been reported where members of a bonobo group returned to an individual captured by an artificial snare (Tokuyama et al. 2012). If any member of a bonobo group cannot follow the other members for several reasons, the group may search for the individual rather than abandoning it. ...
