Object exchange between captive chimpanzees: a case report

Intelligent resource exchange usually has been thought of as a strictly human phenomenon. Some searchers demonstrated experimentally that chimpanzees have the necessary cognitive capacities to exchange food with humans. This short article presents the first example of an immediate and spontaneous exchange of objects between chimpanzees. This exchange between Spock and Maya is not a direct exchange of objects, from hand to hand, as would be observed among humans. This leads us to suppose that exchange, if it really occurs amongst wild chimpanzees, is done indirectly, through the more or less concomitant deposit of the objects or food items on the ground, maybe because chimpanzees are quadrupedal animals. This observation is discussed in relation to the notion of reciprocity used in anthropological and sociological studies.