In a radical overturning of conventional wisdom, scientists in Georgia and California have found significant differences between commodity traders and chimpanzees. Chimps are, in fact, not very good at commodity trading:

the researchers found that chimpanzees often did not spontaneously barter food items, but needed to be trained to engage in commodity barter. Moreover, even after the chimpanzees had been trained to do barters with reliable human trading partners, they were reluctant to engage in extreme deals in which a very good commodity (apple slices) had to be sacrificed in order to get an even more preferred commodity (grapes)...

The report becomes particularly readable when it speculates on the reasons why:

because of their lack of property ownership norms...

...or, for that matter, pockets....

...chimpanzees in nature do not store property and thus would have little opportunity to trade commodities.

There is also significant counterparty risk in the chimp apple/grape market, which is, at present, strictly over-the-counter traded:

chimpanzees lack social systems to enforce deals and... punish an individual that cheats its trading partner by running off with both commodities...These norms are especially costly to enforce, and for this species the game has evidently not been worth the candle. Fortunately, services can be protected without ownership norms, so chimpanzees can and do trade services with each other. As chimpanzee societies demonstrate, however, a service economy does not lead to the same degree of economic specialization that we observe among humans...

There you are. Only the lack of a centrally cleared market in bits of fruit prevents the awful prospect of a flourishing chimp commodity business, which would lead, inevitably, to Planet of the Apes.

(via Mark Thoma)