Mike and Alan are making us aware of the “natural” human behaviours which we usually aren’t conscious of because they are so deeply part of our nature. We aren’t the only species which connect in this way, however. The big difference is that while our primate cousins groom each other, we share information which can not only enhance our bond, but improves our mutual survivability. Ants and bees do this too, but our special trait is that we keep building and sharing a valuable knowledge-base.

Facinating subject! I love reading pre-history,
I love archeology! But, all the animals I have had in my life, all the research that has been done, I must disagree with the lack of social
cooperation among animals and apes. They have
proven animals communicate, have social structure,
provide emotional and physical protection to each other, etc.,etc. And JUDY the ape learned sign language…That would be hard for most PEOPLE. Even my chiauhaua, shows emotion and will cry big wet tears when she can’t have something I am eating…like chocolate.

We ignore other people all the time in busy places. Dogs are always interested in other dogs. I guess they don’t have the concept of stranger(needing permission to interact)

Your comment on sharing knowledge — Isn’t that exactly what caused the human spark. Even though our brain size is three times larger than a chimp’s our cooperative cultural intelligence could be considered almost thousands of times larger than a chimps. Chimps tolerate learning but only we have the insight to teach or share our knowledge with our cultural group. We know that sharing our knowledge gives us a huge advantage in life. Our drive to share this knowledge allowed us to acquire the imagination and symbolism to develop language.