The researchers suggest that capuchin monkeys,like humans,are guided by social emotions.In the wild,they are a cooperative,group-living species.Such cooperation islikely to be stable only when each animal feels it is not being cheated. Feelings of righteous indignation,it seems,are not the preserve of people alone. Refusing a lesser reward completely makes these feelings abundantly clear to other members of the group. However,whether such a sense of fairness evolved independently in capuchins and humans,or whether it stems from the common ancestor that the species had 35 million years ago,is,as yet,an unanswered question.
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