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

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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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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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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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In Africa, we have the bush meat trade, which means that, on a very large scale, animals are being killed in the forests and sold in the cities as a luxury food.
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It is hard to get animals which normally pay little attention to each other to do things together. One can teach dolphins to jump simultaneously out of the water precisely because they show similar behavior spontaneously, but try to make two domestic cats jump together and you will fail.
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The more self-aware an animal is, the more empathetic it tends to be.
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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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The role of inequity in society is grossly underestimated. Inequity is not good for your health, basically.
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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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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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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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Humans have a lot of pro-social tendencies.
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Science is not inherently good.
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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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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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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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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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Female bonobos form a strong sisterhood. They rule through female solidarity.
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I am personally not against keeping animals at zoos, as they serve a huge educational purpose, but treating them well and with respect seems the least we could do, and with 'we' I mean not just zoo staff, but most certainly also the public.
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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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