Hello, fellow human. At least, I'm assuming you're human. Even if most of us are part

Neanderthal, I'm going to bet you're not a bonobo. Not that we're very different, really,

though. I've been reading some research by a Dr. Laura Simone Lewis recently. She studies the

social minds of chimpanzees and bonobos. And using eye tracking studies,

she found that these apes can recognise former group members they haven't seen in years, decades

even, and not just vaguely recognising them, but a huge reaction, especially the ones they had positive relationships with,

which to me is amazing. A bonobo, who hasn't seen a relative in nearly 30 years, still knows them,

still responds to them differently from pictures of strangers, which means that's not just memory,

that's emotional memory.

Interestingly, they were less interested in group members they'd had conflict with in their past,

which suggests something important.

Remembering who treated us kindly, who had our back, may matter more than remembering who didn't, which suggests that

feeling safe is more about being in a social group than it is about avoiding danger.

So Dr. Lewis ran another study with some chimpanzees and others with young children did the same

thing. She built something called curiosity boxes,

little wooden boxes with a door you had to hold open and a screen inside. On the screen were

videos and some showed individuals doing things alone, others showed social interactions.

And both the chimps and the children did the same thing.

They showed a preference for the social videos. They held the flap open for longer and paid more

attention. It seems it's hardwired into us to be drawn to each other. But then it got a bit

interesting because they showed videos of positive

social interactions, playing, grooming, cooperation, and negative ones, conflict, tug-of-war games,

...