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It is well known that apes in the wild offer spontaneous assistance to each other, defending against leopards, say, or consoling distressed companions with tender embraces.

Frans de Waal

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Frans de Waal
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: October 29
Ethologist
Non-Fiction Writer
Primatologist
Psychologist
University Teacher
Zoologist
Den Bosch
Frans B M de Waal
Frans B. M. de Waal
F. de Waal
Known
Tender
Wells
Assistance
Leopards
Well
Spontaneous
Distressed
Companion
Consoling
Offer
Embraces
Wild
Companions
Embrace
Defending
Offers
Apes

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We would much rather blame nature for what we don't like in ourselves than credit it for what we do like.
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Future benefits rarely figure in the minds of animals.
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The primate laugh is given in playful contexts, and as such has a strong similarity to the human laugh.
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Popular culture bombards us with examples of animals being humanized for all sorts of purposes, ranging from education to entertainment to satire to propaganda. Walt Disney, for example, made us forget that Mickey is a mouse, and Donald a duck. George Orwell laid a cover of human societal ills over a population of livestock.
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The enemy of science is not religion... . The true enemy is the substitution of thought, reflection, and curiosity with dogma.
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There's actually a lot of evidence in primates and other animals that they return favors.
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To neglect the common ground with other primates, and to deny the evolutionary roots of human morality, would be like arriving at the top of a tower to declare that the rest of the building is irrelevant, that the precious concept of tower ought to be reserved for the summit.
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You should know as much as you can about the human species if you have a hand in designing human society.
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To endow animals with human emotions has long been a scientific taboo. But if we do not, we risk missing something fundamental, about both animals and us.
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I call the notion that we are nothing but killer apes the Beethoven fallacy. Beethoven was disorganized and messy, and yet his music is the epitome of order.
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I think we need to start thinking about grounding our moral systems in our biology.
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If we look straight and deep into a chimpanzee's eyes, an intelligent self-assured personality looks back at us. If they are animals, what must we be?
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As far as the environment is concerned, I am becoming pessimistic because I do not see anybody stepping up and taking the long view approach. It seems like we're stuck in a tragedy of the commons where everyone is trying to contribute as little as possible to get out of this situation.
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Most exotic animals are not particularly interested in people, which makes it hard to provoke them. Human-rearing gets them used to and sometimes imprinted on humans, which makes them potentially dangerous.
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The chimpanzees could tear me apart in no time. They're many times stronger than we are.
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There is little evidence that other animals judge the appropriateness of actions that do not directly affect themselves.
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The fact that the apes exist and that we can study them is extremely important and makes us reflect on ourselves and our human nature. In that sense alone, you need to protect the apes.
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Being both more systematically brutal than chimps and more empathetic than bonobos, we are by far the most bipolar ape. Our societies are never completely peaceful, never completely competitive, never ruled by sheer selfishness, and never perfectly moral.
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Religion may have become a codification of morality, and it may fortify it, but it's not the origin of it.
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