The animal origins of disgust: reports of basic disgust in nonhuman great apes

Trevor I. Case*, Richard J. Stevenson, Richard W. Byrne, Catherine Hobaiter

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    16 Citations (Scopus)
    34 Downloads (Pure)

    Abstract

    Intrinsic to an evolved disease avoidance account of disgust is Darwin's assumption of continuity between the emotional lives of humans and animals. However, beyond the case of avoiding stimuli that taste bad, there has been little exploration of the existence of basic disgust elicitors in animals. Moreover, one influential perspective holds that disgust is unique to humans-a preadaptation of distaste that expands through culture to include a wide range of elicitors (e.g., Rozin, 2015). The present study represents a broad-scope investigation into disgust-like responses that might be present in nonhuman great ape species. A survey of aversions, contamination reactions, and signs of disgust in nonhuman great apes (principally chimpanzees) was collected from 74 great ape researchers, fieldworkers, and keepers. Overall, the results suggest that nonhuman great apes share with humans an aversion to a restricted range of core pathogen sources, which extends beyond distaste to resemble human disgust. However, in nonhuman great apes, this aversion is muted. Candidates for this difference between humans and other great apes are considered, including frequent exposure to basic disgust elicitors in nonhuman great apes and increased dependence on meat-eating in hominin ancestry. We suggest that differences in disgust- like behavior between humans and nonhuman great apes reflect the specific ecological standpoint of the animal and that rather than being unique to humans, disgust is a continuation of the armory of disease avoidance behavior ubiquitous in animals.

    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)231-260
    Number of pages30
    JournalEvolutionary Behavioral Sciences
    Volume14
    Issue number3
    Early online date23 May 2019
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - Jul 2020

    Keywords

    • pathogen
    • primate
    • disease avoidance
    • evolution
    • aversions

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