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CHIMPANZEES reach out to cuddle stressed friends, suggesting it’s not just humans who feel empathy.

Following a fight between two individuals, the chimp on the receiving end of aggression tends to spend more time scratching and grooming itself – both indicators of stress. This behaviour subsides if the fighters subsequently reconcile. Yet chimps don’t always make up, and sometimes a third chimp will step in to comfort the distressed party .

Orlaith Fraser at the Liverpool John Moores University, UK, and her colleagues wondered whether this intervention could provide the same kind of stress relief as reconciliation does. The team studied 22 chimps at a zoo and found scratching and grooming was reduced by half when another chimp – most often a close friend already – offered a hand, an embrace, or other friendly contact after a fight (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073pnas.0804141105 ).

“The evidence is compelling and makes it likely that consolation behaviour is indeed an expression of empathy,” says Frans de Waal at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.

Empathy is not just a human trait

IT WON’T actually cure cancer, but a gene therapy has helped dogs with various malignant tumours live longer, better lives. If it works in humans, the therapy might bring similar benefits for people with cancer.

Ruxandra Draghia-Akli and her colleagues at VGX Pharmaceuticals in The Woodlands, Texas, inserted DNA containing the gene for growth hormone releasing hormone (GHRH) into the muscles of 43 pet dogs that were undergoing drug therapy for a range of different cancers. GHRH

boosts production of growth hormone and insulin-like growth factor-1, both of which build muscle.

Three months later, 54 per cent of the dogs showed signs that they were expressing the inserted genes. These dogs survived for an average of 178 days, compared with 97 days for dogs not given gene therapy. Although the dogs on gene therapy did not on average gain more weight than the ones who weren’t, their appetites increased – an indication that their overall

quality of life was better. The results were presented at an Endocrine Society meeting in San Francisco this week.

The team has applied for permission to start human trials of the therapy, and says it could eventually be used to combat the muscle-wasting associated with cancer and other diseases such as AIDS. “The drug has the potential to provide novel treatment options for patients suffering from several devastating diseases,” claims Joseph Kim of VGX Pharmaceuticals.

A sick dog’s life doesn’t have to be so bad

WHY do people go to church? According to Jason Weeden at Arizona State University, Tempe, it is to go forth and multiply.

After analysing questionnaire responses from more than 22,000 Americans, Weeden and his colleagues found that factors related to sex showed the strongest links to churchgoing. These include marital status, number of children, preferred family size, and moral views on topics like cheating and contraception. Other variables that have often been linked to religiosity such as age, gender or conscientiousness failed to explain church attendance, after controlling for differences in sexual and family values (Evolution and Human

Behavior, DOI: 10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2008.03.004).

Weeden suggests that looking for partners within a religious community reduces the risk of adultery in couples adopting a monogamous, high-fertility mating strategy as there is a large fitness cost if the marriage fails: men risk losing substantial investment if the woman cheats; women risk being abandoned with a large brood and fewer resources to care for them.

“Religious groups make this deal more plausible to both partners,” Weeden says. “You surround yourself with people who strongly believe that one of the worst things you can do is to abandon your spouse or sleep around.”

If you plan a big family, go to church

TODAY much of the north-western US wilderness is already a tinderbox, but thanks to global warming, wildfires will be scorching even more land every year by the end of the century.

Because warmer oceans encourage warmer weather, emergency planners in the US Southwest have long monitored temperatures in the equatorial Pacific to forecast wildfire activity. But a warm Pacific can spark fires in the north-west as well, says Yongqiang Liu of the US Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service in Athens, Georgia. Warmer-than-average ocean temperatures in the

North Pacific create more low-pressure weather systems than cooler waters do, pushing jet stream circulation north into Canada. This leaves room for high-pressure systems to move in from the south, bringing drier and hotter air to the north-west.

Liu plugged US fire and ocean temperature data from 1980 to 2002 into two major climate models, which predicted that average ocean surface temperatures in the northern Pacific will warm by least 0.6 °C by 2080. Liu’s calculations show the amount of land burned annually in the north-west will grow from under a million hectares in 2002 to nearly 2 million hectares by 2080. He presented the work in May at an American Geophysical Union meeting in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Forest fire? Blame it on the ocean

22 | NewScientist | 21 June 2008 www.newscientist.com

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