Simply it is doing for someone or others without expectations. I think of caring for an elderly parent or a good samaritan who stops to administer aid in an emergency situation. It is a quality of humans that is at the root of human morality in a cross-cultural sense. DeWaal asks us to consider whether or not the basis for altruism is genetic . As with other issues, there is suggestion that we are influenced both by our genetic coding and by what we learn.
Imitation plays an important role for apes as they learn rules of behavior.
What we know from other primate studies is that apes use less imitation for learning than humans and yet more than other primates. Show a human child and a young chimpanzee how to do something and you have two solutions. The human solution is to watch was has been demonstrated and relatively quickly turn to that as the solution. A chimp on the other hand is more likely to stay at trying to find its own solution and will ignore the demonstration. A great example of this is the Bonobo Kanzi who was shown how to chip stone flakes by Nicholas Toff.