Christophe Boesch: Director of the Department of Primatology at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

Fieldwork studies have revealed with much detail the sophisticated levels of cooperation and altruism in the social domain seen in many animal species. Now, recently some psychologists and economists are loudly claiming that cooperation and altruism are uniquely human abilities. How can such divergences originate? In my eyes, a very strong underestimation of ecology is at the origin of such a situation. I review in my talk some of the recent evidence showing the importance of ecology on the development of intelligence in humans and in chimpanzees and how that affects the performance of cooperation and altruism in these two species. The evolution of cooperation and altruism is decisively affected by the ecological conditions and this explains why under some contexts the level of cooperation and altruism might strongly differ within one species. In conclusion, I ask for more sensitivity to ecological conditions when making cross- species comparisons and suggest that at present no data support a species difference in cooperation and altruism tendency, but all point to a strong ecological component.