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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?

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
Self
Deep
Looks
Motivational
Chimpanzee
Must
Animal
Chimpanzees
Eyes
Assured
Eye
Straight
Inspirational
Animals
Back
Intelligent
Look
Personality

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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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The primate laugh is given in playful contexts, and as such has a strong similarity to the human laugh.
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The more self-aware an animal is, the more empathetic it tends to be.
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Dogmatists have one advantage: they are poor listeners.
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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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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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Science is not inherently good.
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Male bonobos really don't fit the human male ideal.
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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.
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People want to work with somebody who feels shame, who worries about the perceptions of others. Dishonesty is something we don't like in others.
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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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We, who think like animals living in small groups, must structure a global world. We believe in universal human rights and believe racism and war are wrong. On the other hand, it is our nature to be cooperative and loving almost exclusively with the members of the group to which we feel we belong.
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I was raised Catholic. Not just a little bit Catholic, like my wife, Catherine. When she was young, many Catholics in France already barely went to church, except for the big three: baptism, marriage, and funeral. And only the middle one was by choice.
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Most men probably wouldn't want to live the lives of bonobos. They're constantly clinging to their mothers' apron strings. They lack the ability to make decisions about their own fates, something that we and male chimpanzees practically consider our birthright.
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Octopuses have hundreds of suckers, each one equipped with its own ganglion with thousands of neurons. These 'mini-brains' are interconnected, making for a widely distributed nervous system. That is why a severed octopus arm may crawl on its own and even pick up food.
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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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The intuitive connection children feel with animals can be a tremendous source of joy. The unconditional love received from pets, and the lack of artifice in the relationship, contrast sharply with the much trickier dealings with members of their own species.
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After World War II it was decided that, in order to prevent the Germans and the French from having another war, it would be better to tie them together into one economic pact so they would invest in each other and have mutual stakes. Until now, that has worked to prevent warfare between the two.
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The development of family entities enables men to cooperate far more effectively. Instead of constantly competing for the women with other men, each man essentially has a partner assigned to him, one with whom he can establish a family.
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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.
Frans de Waal