Large-scale cooperation

摘要

We are cooperating right now. You are sharing in a communicative venture that is the product of two authors coordinating their views on a scientific joint effort, mediated by an editor and a publishing team. This is no small feat; it is the result of the evolution of complex cognition that might be uniquely human. But there is increasing evidence that the evolutionary roots of cognitively rich cooperation may be found in our closest relatives, chimpanzees and bono-bos. In research reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Plotnik et al. propose that elephants (which are only very distantly related to humans) can cooperate as cleverly as these great apes. Such an independently evolved case could help us identify the evolutionary pressures that shape intelligent minds.