Consolation, a form of compassion, is an empathetic trait common across humans from all walks of life. From hunter-gatherers living in egalitarian societies to the hierarchical societies common of today, humans have maintained this means of expressing empathy for others since the very emergence of our species. It can be hard to believe that a trait so instinctual and basic is common only to the human species and has its roots only in the most recent lineage split from apes (Warneken et al., 2007). This intuition, in recent decades, has been put to the test by many primatologists, anthropologists and evolutionary psychologists alike; the observations and results obtained have been wholly remarkable yet self-explanatory. Numerous findings have provided support for the hypothesis that apes, like humans, posses strong empathetic tendencies ranging from the most basic, such as state-matching, to the more cognitively complex, such as consolation and targeted helping (de Waal, 2008). Although evident across most ape species, consolation, a level of empathy defined as comforting behaviour provided by one individual to a distraught party, is especially prominent and well studied in chimpanzees (de Waal, 2008). Like humans, chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) actively share and understand the emotions of their group members, giving rise to altruistic and consolatory acts, for the sole purpose of providing support and comfort to fellow distressed peers.
