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Fairness may be a uniquely human trait, according to Researchers at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at UCL.

A study which involved 21 healthy-but severely thirsty-participants showed that they will reject water if they believed the offer unfair or believed themselves to be cheated.

After scientists drip-fed some subjects with saline solution and other's with a less-salty solution, the team were paired into two and then separately took part in an ultimatum game. They were told to decide how to split of a 500ml bottle of water that they knew could not be drunk for full hour after the end of the game.

One of them would play the part of 'Proposer' and decide how the bottle should be split. The other would be a 'Responder' who could either accept the split and drink the water offered to them, or reject the split so that both parties would get nothing.

However, both parties were secretly the responder and were told by researchers that the 'proposer' had decided to give the responder 62.5 mil keeping the rest to him/herself.

Results showed that despite being desperately thirsty, the responder tended to reject the highly unequal measures of water.

"The participants' choices were not influenced by how thirsty they actually were, as measured objectively from the blood sample. However, they were more likely to accept the offer if they subjectively felt that they were thirsty."

Dr. Nick wright who led the study responds,

"These findings show that humans, unlike even our closest relatives chimpanzees, reject an unfair offer of a primary reward like food or water - and will do that even when severely thirsty. However, we also show this fairness motivation is traded-off against self-interest, and that this self-interest is not determined by how their objective need for water but instead by their subjective perception of thirst.

"These findings are interesting for understanding how subjective feelings of fairness and self-interested need impact on everyday decisions, for example in the labor market," adds Wright.

Interestingly enough, the study does not reveal what would happen if the participant was offered the large amount of water. This author suspects that, like most animals, they would accept it.