Frans de Waal Quotes

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.

The enemy of science is not religion.

.. . The true enemy is the substitution of thought, reflection, and curiosity with dogma.

If you ask anyone, what is morality based on? These are the two factors that always come out: One is reciprocity, … a sense of fairness, and the other one is empathy and compassion.

Darwin wasn't just provocative in saying that we descend from the apes - he didn't go far enough. We are apes in every way, from our long arms and tailless bodies to our habits and temperament.

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

I have often noticed how primate groups in their entirety enter a similar mood.

All of a sudden, all of them are playful, hopping around. Or all of them are grumpy. Or all of them are sleepy and settle down. In such cases, the mood contagion serves the function of synchronizing activities.

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.

We are by far the most contradictory of all primates.

An animal with this much internal conflict has never lived on this earth.

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.

Female bonobos form a strong sisterhood. They rule through female solidarity.

The sturdiest pillars of human morality are compassion and a sense of justice.

Studies of reconciliation in primates have demonstrated that if the relationship value increases between two parties they are more willing to make peace.

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.

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.

Competitiveness is just as much a part of our nature as empathy.

The ideal, in my view, is a democratic system with a social market economy, because it takes both tendencies into account.

The original form is the contagion of fear and alarm.

You're in a flock of birds. One bird suddenly takes off. You have no time to wait and see what's going on. You take off, too. Otherwise, you're lunch.

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.

In humans, the family prevents infanticide.

Next to language, the core family, consisting of a mother, a father and children, is the greatest difference between us and other primates.

The evolutionary struggle for survival is really a self-serving series of blows and stabs, and yet it can lead to extremely social animals like dolphins, wolves or, for that matter, primates.

If both parties have a stake in the other, the chances of them killing each other are going to be reduced.

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.

Contrary to general belief, humans imitate apes more than the reverse. The sight of monkeys or apes induces an irresistible urge in people to jump up and down, exaggeratedly scratch themselves and holler in a way that must make the primates wonder how this otherwise so intelligent species has come to depend on such inferior means of communication.

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.

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.

We justify the inequalities by saying some people are just better and smarter than others and the strong should survive and the poor can die off.

You should know as much as you can about the human species if you have a hand in designing human society. Of course, I'm not saying that you can derive moral rules from nature - that's deriving an ought from an is, as the philosophers say - but you do need to know what kind of animals we are if you want to design a stable society.

If you want to design a successful human society you need to know what kind of animal we are. Are we a social animal or a selfish animal? Do we respond better when we're solitary or living in a group?

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

I describe in 'Chimpanzee Politics' how the alpha male needs broad support to reach the top spot. He needs some close allies and he needs many group members to be on his side.

Females avoid conflict. They are afraid of violence. The males, on the other hand, are less averse to strife. But once conflict breaks out, the males are much better at reconciling. In a study done in Finland, children who had quarreled were asked how much longer they intended to be angry at one another. The boys proudly said: "Oh, at least one or two days." The girls said "forever".

The hamadryas baboon is a harem holder where one male mates with multiple females.

Humans have a lot of pro-social tendencies.

I sometimes try to imagine what would have happened if we’d known the bonobo first and the chimpanzee only later—or not at all. The discussion about human evolution might not revolve as much around violence, warfare and male dominance, but rather around sexuality, empathy, caring and cooperation. What a different intellectual landscape we would occupy!

The possibility that empathy resides in parts of the brain so ancient that we share them with rats should give pause to anyone comparing politicians with those poor, underestimated creatures.

A chimpanzee who is really gearing up for a fight doesn't waste time with gestures but just goes ahead and attacks.

The more self-aware an animal is, the more empathetic it tends to be.

War is evitable if conditions are such that the costs of making war are higher than the benefits.

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.

If I were God, I'd work on the reach of empathy.

It is not only visitors to the zoo who are fascinated but uneasy in the presence of chimpanzees; the same is true of scientists. The more they learn about these great apes, the deeper our identity crisis seems to become. The resemblance between humans and chimpanzees is not only external. 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?

Exclusive homosexuality is not very common in nature.

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.

You should know as much as you can about the human species if you have a hand in designing human society.

The chimpanzees could tear me apart in no time. They're many times stronger than we are.

When someone brutally kills someone else, we call him "animalistic." But we consider ourselves "human" when we give to the poor.

The role of inequity in society is grossly underestimated. Inequity is not good for your health, basically.

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.

Dogmatists have one advantage: they are poor listeners.

Wild groups of chimpanzees attack their enemies like gangs. What they completely lack, precisely because of their strong territorial behavior, is a friendly relationship with their neighbors.