FLICKR, TAMBAKO THE JAGUAR
Researchers have long debated whether animals play fair. A new study out this week (January 14) provides evidence that chimps are indeed even-handed players—though not everyone is satisfied.
In the study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science, researchers adapted an economic game—called the Ultimatum game— to test fairness in chimps. In the game, a “proposer” chimp offers a “responder” chimp one of two colored plastic tokens—one color means splitting a banana equally, while the other means an unequal split, with the proposer chimp taking 5/6s of the banana. In the game, if the responder chimp accepts the offered token, the responder can turn it in to a researcher for the agreed upon shares of the banana. But, if the responder rejects ...
