Primatologist Quotes

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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 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?

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.

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.

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.

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

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".

Human morality is unthinkable without empathy.

There is little evidence that other animals judge the appropriateness of actions that do not directly affect themselves.

Chimpanzees, typically, kiss and embrace after fights.

They first make eye contact from a distance to see the mood of the others. Then they approach and kiss and embrace.

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.

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

Although elephants are far more distantly related to us than the great apes, they seem to have evolved similar social and cognitive capacities.

Dogmatists have one advantage: they are poor listeners.

Exclusive homosexuality is not very common in nature.

Future benefits rarely figure in the minds of animals.

Humans have a lot of pro-social tendencies.

I think we need to start thinking about grounding our moral systems in our biology.

I'm personally a nonbeliever, so I'm struggling with if we really need religion.

Male bonobos really don't fit the human male ideal.

Male chimpanzees have an extraordinarily strong drive for dominance.

They're constantly jockeying for position.

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.

Personally, I think it is possible to build a society that is moral on a nonreligious basis, but the jury is still out on that.

Religion may have become a codification of morality, and it may fortify it, but it's not the origin of it.

Science is not inherently good.