Scientists have found that primates have human quality – a sense of justice

For many years it was believed that a sense of justice is a unique innate quality that a person has exclusively. But American scientists have refuted this statement by their discovery: they established that chimpanzees have this quality, which are considered the closest relatives of man.

Thus, a group of researchers from America taught primates to play a game called Ultimatum, the rules of which require that one of the players who receive the prize shall share it with a partner. The latter, in case of disagreement with the decision of the winner, has the opportunity to refuse a divided prize, then both of them will be left without a prize.  To compare the results, scientists held a similar test among children aged two to seven years.

So, it turned out that the monkeys are as well, like children, recognize injustice: they shared the prize in more than 50% of cases honestly. Dr. Darbi Priktor from the University of Georgia in Atlanta (USA), the author of this study, noted that scientists used this game, since it is it that is considered a gold standard for determining a sense of justice. As a rule, in most cases, people generously share with a partner, giving him at least half of the award. The same result was shown by chimpanzees during the experiment.

According to the scientist from the University of Emory in Atlanta, the United States France de Vaal, an expert in the field of animal behavior, before that it was believed that animals were not able to play in the “ultimatum” at all, since the primates are inherent in the most selfish way. However, the scientist added that his colleagues found out that the chimpanzees still have a sense of justice, and they very much like people in this.

According to the results of the observations of researchers, when two chimpanzees were offered to divide the banana among themselves, in most cases they offered a partner the same piece of size as they left themselves. Scientists believe that the experiment serves as evidence that a sense of justice was born evolutionary. Chimpanzees are distinguished by behavior that are very similar to human: they live in groups, hunt together, share the responsibilities of caring for their offspring, etc.D.