DCCN Colloquium by Prof. Dr. Judith Burkart

An obvious approach to understanding human evolution is to study our closest relatives, the great apes. Humans indeed share a remarkable number of traits with them. At the same time, however, we are also markedly different. According to the cooperative breeding model, the fact that humans, but none of the other great apes heavily depend on the help of group members to successfully raise their offspring (cooperative breeding), can readily explain some of these differences, e.g. our unusual life history or demographic success. The goal of this talk is to explore motivational and communicative consequences of cooperative breeding. To do so, I will zoom in on callitrichid monkeys because they are the only cooperative breeders among primates besides humans, and compare them to independently breeding primates. Our data suggest that cooperative breeding is indeed associated with suite of psychological adjustments (higher social tolerance, stronger proactive prosociality, attentiveness to group members) and remarkably complex vocal communication. Viewing human origins through the lens of our double legacy as cooperatively breeding great apes is thus a fruitful approach to study the evolution of the human mind.