Chimpanzees value social information even more than food rewards Adobe Stock Leipzig Zoo, in central Germany, is a world-renowned reference center for research on great apes. Recent studies have observed that local chimpanzees use touchscreen controls to navigate virtual forests and locate food rewards—applying techniques similar to those they would use in the wild. Another piece of research (which I was part of) investigated the social curiosity of chimpanzees.
We found that they actively seek out information about the interactions of others, even if it means giving up food rewards. Keeping track of the latest social developments of their peers appears to be fundamental to the social well-being of these great apes. But in my decade of working with the chimpanzees and bonobos at Leipzig Zoo, one question came up repeatedly.
Were the differences in how each great ape cooperated and resolved conflicts simply due to their mood on a given day? Or could there be long-term explanations—deeply rooted personality traits, for example, or their relationship history with other primates? Long-term questions like this are very difficult to address in isolated studies, which often rely on only a handful of participants. Because of this, my colleagues and I developed EVApeCognition: a standardized database containing 18 years of great ape experiments, decisions, and relationships. Now on g1 This lays the groundwork for answering many other questions about the cognition, intelligence, and social behavior of these extraordinary creatures.
If a bonobo showed remarkable generosity toward a partner in 2008, for example, we can determine whether that behavior was tied to its stable disposition, a specific relationship, or some other factor. Changing the way we study great apes Altogether, EVApeCognition comprises 262 experimental datasets from 150 scientific publications between 2004 and 2021. All were supervised by the Wolfgang Köhler Primate Research Center, based at Leipzig Zoo.
Eighty-one great apes participated in these studies, with the vast majority (78) participating in more than one. These comprehensive social cognition studies assessed how great apes think about other primates, how they cooperate, and to what extent they are motivated to help their peers. But there have been limitations to this research. In the wild, great apes are social animals living in stable groups with histories, hierarchies, and relationships that change over time.
In contrast, the vast majority of studies in our database involved primates in pairs, under strictly controlled conditions. Therefore, moving studies to larger groups could offer an ecologically more relevant view of their cognition and social behavior. Group environments can present primates with different problems that more closely resemble the social challenges they face daily in the wild.
Our most recent study, led by Kirsten Sutherland at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, found that quartets of great apes maintained access to a yogurt container for a significantly longer period than pairs. Social tolerance played a key role, with more tolerant quartets maintaining access to the yogurt for longer periods. We found that cooperation was stronger when the higher-ranking individual showed moderation, emphasizing the importance of tolerant leadership. The new database also highlights an imbalance present in captive great ape research: chimpanzees dominate the records, while bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans remain comparatively underrepresented.
Bonobos—who, unlike chimpanzees, are known to cooperate in the wild outside the boundaries of their group's territory—would be particularly interesting subjects for this shift in research toward the study of larger groups. Bridging the gap with wild environments Experimental performance does not occur in a social vacuum. A great ape's willingness to cooperate on a task on a given Tuesday may reflect not only its intelligence, but also whether it groomed its partner that morning or whether its status within the group changed. Providing this context is essential to understanding how everyday experiences and social relationships shape their cognitive development.
Fortunately, the field is moving in promising directions, with the EVApeCognition database being one piece of a broader picture. The global ManyPrimates project. This shows that genetic lineage played a more important role than ecology or sociality in the evolution of their short-term memory. At the level of higher-order reasoning, we now know that chimpanzees update their beliefs by considering all sources of information before making a choice.
A 2025 study showed that they remained loyal to an initial belief when counter-evidence was weaker, but revised it when supporting evidence became stronger—a pattern long considered distinctly human. Perhaps most ambitious is that the divide between captive and wild environments is also beginning to close. Research led by Sofie Forss from the University of Zurich, for example, uncovered a systematic “captivity effect” when presenting the same novel stimuli to both wild and captive orangutans.
Wild individuals responded much more cautiously to novelty than their zoo-kept counterparts. Taken together, these efforts point in a common direction: toward an understanding of great ape cognition that is broader in scope, richer in context, and truer to the complexity of their social lives. Alejandro Sánchez-Amaro is a professor of Psychology in the Psychology Department at the University of Stirling. He does not consult, work for, own shares in, or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond his academic appointment.
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