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Armies are a purely human invention. Most soldiers who go to war nowadays don't even do it because they're inherently aggressive.

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
Army
Armies
War
Inherently
Human
Purely
Humans
Nowadays
Even
Soldiers
Aggressive
Invention
Soldier

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Studies of reconciliation in primates have demonstrated that if the relationship value increases between two parties they are more willing to make peace.
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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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Humanity is actually much more cooperative and empathic than [it's] given credit for.
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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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Humans have a lot of pro-social tendencies.
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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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Future benefits rarely figure in the minds of animals.
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I think we need to start thinking about grounding our moral systems in our biology.
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It wasn't God who introduced us to morality rather, it was the other way around. God was put into place to help us live the way we felt we ought to.
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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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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 role of inequity in society is grossly underestimated. Inequity is not good for your health, basically.
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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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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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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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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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Science is not inherently good.
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Bonobo studies started in the '70s and came to fruition in the '80s. Then in the '90s, all of a sudden, boom, they ended because of the warfare in the Congo. It was really bad for the bonobo and ironic that people with their warfare were preventing us from studying the hippies of the primate world.
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When we are bad, we are worse than any primate that I know. And when we are good, we are actually better and more altruistic than any primate that I know.
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Male bonobos really don't fit the human male ideal.
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