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Last year I had a chance to visit the Fauna Foundation, a sanctuary in Montreal for chimpanzees “retired” from research laboratories and entertainment.  The Fauna Foundation received a lot of press after writer Andrew Westoll wrote The Chimps of Fauna Sanctuary, which is an account of his time as a volunteer at the sanctuary (I recommend reading it!).  This sanctuary serves an important function because they offer peace and relative freedom to chimpanzees that have only known a caged existence as test subjects in biomedical facilities.  As an outspoken critic of this research, I am enormously grateful for these sanctuaries.  In biomedical facilities, chimpanzees often live in unsanitary conditions without areas for foraging or an ability to interact with other members of their own species.  Many chimpanzees that are eventually transferred to sanctuaries suffer from post-traumatic stress syndrome.

That is why I was very happy to…

Humans care about fairness.  I know for me personally, if there are a limited number of resources (e.g., food, shelter), I would feel bad making a decision that gave me more resources at the expense of a close friend or family member.  Of course, that is an anecdotal example of human fairness, but it has been studied scientifically!

Researchers have studied this scientifically by designing “the ultimatum game.”  This game tests whether humans always act in their material self-interest.  In the game, one person must decide how to divide a sum of money and/or resources between two people.  The first person (proposer) makes a proposal, and the second player (responder) either accepts or rejects the proposal.  If the responder rejects the proposal, both players receive nothing.  When human adults play this game, they typically split the resources equally.  This demonstrates that humans are sensitive to fairness.  However, primatologists are still…

Since becoming involved in Roots and Shoots, I’ve become more knowledgeable of and engaged by the many parallels between chimps and humans. Did you know that it was Jane Goodall who discovered that chimps are omnivores like us?! Before she observed chimps eating a bush pig, people thought that chimps were vegetarians. Like humans, chimps are highly social animals who have strong bonds to their community groups as well as family members. Young chimps have a particularly strong relationship with their mother and even sleep in their mother’s nest for the first five years of their lives! They also have both opposable thumbs (like us) and opposable big toes – a difference that makes them well suited to clinging to branches as they swing through the trees!

Even though there are many aspects of our behaviours that make us similar to one another, Roots and Shoots has also led…