Most of us have a pretty limited knowledge of ape behaviour.

You may have had your wing mirror removed by a truculent baboon in a safari park. You may have seen someone on You’ve Been Framed having their Strawberry Mivvi nicked by a Gibraltan macaque.

Other than that, you may think of most of our primate cousins as uncomplicated critters who spend half their time swinging through the trees and the other half scratching their backsides.

You certainly would not have credited the average chimpanzee with superhuman compassion.

But that all changes with the revelations surrounding Pansy, a chimp in her fifties, who died of old age at Blair Drummond Safari Park, near Stirling in Scotland. As Pansy’s life ebbed away, scientists kept video cameras running, capturing behaviour never before observed in a chimp group.

Pansy lay down in a nest and the group gathered round to groom and caress her. At the end, the apes crouched down to study her face intently, then shook her gently, perhaps checking for signs of life.

After her death, an adult female sat with Pansy and held her hand, and her daughter stayed with the body all night.

Here was proof that chimps – our nearest relative in the animal kingdom – are also capable of that complex human quality, empathy.

But is empathy such a given even for human beings?

Another bit of candid camera footage holds a devastating insight into animal behaviour.

On Sunday April 18 at 5.40am, a CCTV camera in the Jamaica district of Queens, New York, captured a woman walking along the pavement, followed by a man. What happened next was off-camera, but it is assumed that the man attacked the woman, and a 32-year old Guatemalan homeless man called Hugo Tale-Yax came to her aid.

The man is seen running back in the direction from which he came, followed seconds later by Hugo, who falls onto the pavement and lies, face down, in a growing pool of blood from several knife wounds in his chest.

It is well over an hour before anyone calls the emergency services, during which time 25 people walk past Hugo, look at him, but do nothing to help.

One man – with a lack of empathy that would shame a chimp – takes a picture of the fallen hero on his mobile phone. Another passer-by shakes Hugo, lifts his arm then walks away.

A wake was being held for Hugo today.

I was in conversation earlier this week with Malcolm Gladwell, a staff writer for the New Yorker magazine and an acclaimed author at the popular end of social science. Raised in Canada, he says he is ‘fascinated and appalled’ by the USA.

But he added: “New York is not America. New York is a principality, a duchy within the larger kingdom. It’s a fascinating place for both good and ill.”

He neglected to mention that New York can also sometimes be a place less civilised than the Planet Of The Apes.

Laughter is the best medicine ... for some

I AWAIT scientific proof that many a mickle makes a muckle, fine words butter no parsnips and that we should beware of Greeks bearing gifts.

But at least one old proverb seems to be true... laughter really is the best medicine.

A good chuckle unleashes the same chemical changes in the body as a bout of exercise, according to a researcher in California, who goes by the eminently titter-worthy name of Lee Berk.

It is tempting to think that, instead of going jogging, you could sling on a Ricky Gervais DVD. But before you embark on a ‘giggle yourself thin’ diet, you should know that the hormonal change which both laughter and exercise provokes in the body also enhances your appetite. What we need then is mirthful mass medication. Talking of which, Peter Kay last night launched the most concerted assault yet on the nation’s funny bones, with a tour which has sold 750,000 tickets at £35 each, totalling £26,250,000. There’s a man who is laughing for sure... all the way to the bank.

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