Dwarf mongooses could reward friends later: study
Source: Xinhua| 2018-05-29 02:43:40|Editor: Mu Xuequan
WASHINGTON, May 28 (Xinhua) -- British scientists found that dwarf mongooses, Africa's smallest meet-eaters, could remember previous cooperative acts by their group mates and reward them later.
A study, published on Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, provided the experimental evidence in a wild non-primate population for delayed contingent cooperation: providing a later reward to an individual for the amount of cooperation it has performed.
It also offered convincing evidence of cross-commodity trading, whereby individuals reward one type of cooperative behavior with a different cooperative act, as dwarf mongooses traded grooming for sentinel behavior, which involves an individual adopting a raised position to look out for danger and warning foraging group mates with alarm calls.
Andy Radford from Bristol University's School of Biological Sciences, the paper's senior author, said, "Humans frequently trade goods and can track the amount they owe using memories of past exchanges. While nonhuman animals are also known to be capable of trading cooperative acts immediately for one another, more contentious is the possibility that there can be delayed rewards."
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