“It has been claimed that chimpanzees act mainly for their own ends, but in our experiment, there was no reward and they still helped,” said Mr Warneken. Evidence of how chimps understand that co-operation is helpful comes from a second Max Planck study by Alicia Melis and colleagues, which shows that chimpanzees even choose “expert” chimps to help them.

The researchers devised a series of experiments where chimpanzees needed to recruit their peers to help them reach food on a platform.

The chimpanzees seemed to keep track of their success with each potential partner and eventually chose collaborators who were more adept at retrieving the food.

‘We’ve never seen this level of understanding during cooperation in any other animals except humans,’ said Miss Melis.

In her study, not only did chimpanzees understand when they needed help, they understood their role, their partner’s role, and chose who they wanted to work with.

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