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We are territorial, power-hungry and even more brutal than chimpanzees.

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
Territorial
Chimpanzees
Brutal
Hungry
Power
Even

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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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Science is not inherently good.
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There's actually a lot of evidence in primates and other animals that they return favors.
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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 role of inequity in society is grossly underestimated. Inequity is not good for your health, basically.
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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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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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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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I think we need to start thinking about grounding our moral systems in our biology.
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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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Morality, after all, has nothing to do with selflessness. On the contrary, self-interest is precisely the basis of the categorical imperative.
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Humans have a lot of pro-social tendencies.
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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 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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The more self-aware an animal is, the more empathetic it tends to be.
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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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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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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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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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Humanity is actually much more cooperative and empathic than [it's] given credit for.
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