Great apes, such as bonobos (Pan paniscus) and chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), exhibit remarkably enduring social memories. In one notable experiment, a bonobo was able to recognize her sister after being apart for 26 years, setting a record for the “longest-lasting nonhuman social memory” observed in scientific research.
Researchers employed eye-tracking cameras to monitor the apes’ responses to images of both familiar and unfamiliar individuals.
The study revealed that the strength of the relationship between the two individuals affected recognition, with more positive relationships resulting in greater attention from the apes.
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Banner image of chimpanzee by Alex Salcedo/Getty Images.
Bonobos and chimps recall friends and family even after years apart: Study
Transcript
Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors.00:00:00:00 – 00:00:31:12
When they see a familiar face, particularly one that they haven’t seen in a while, they get excited. It seems like they really recognize and remember us. Chimpanzees and bonobos are closest living phylogenetic relatives. They are great ape cousins. They’re the closest living animal species to us humans. We thought it was important to study their long term social memory, to understand the extent of their long term social memory, and compare it to our own human, long term social memory.
00:00:31:15 – 00:01:00:15
We wanted to design a study that could empirically test that hypothesis, that great apes do have this rich social memory for familiar social partners. We showed these images of their former group mates next to an image of a complete stranger, and then the eye tracker sitting directly below the screen could tell whether the bonobos and chimps that participate in the study, whether they were looking longer at the images of their former group mates or the images of strangers.
00:01:00:18 – 00:01:35:29
We had a very simple prediction if they remember one of those individuals, they should spend more time looking at them. And this is exactly what we found. They were particularly interested in looking at the faces of former group mates that they had the most positive social relationships with. So the individuals that you might call their friends.
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