While economists and biologists scratch their heads over why people help others at their own expense, the subjects in a recent experiment scratched their heads for an altogether different reason – to groom their glossy coats. The subjects, young chimpanzees at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, showed for the first time that humans are not the only altruistic animals. Instead, in a series of experiments, the chimpanzees helped their caretaker…

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Read more stories by Alana Conner Snibbe.