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Frans de Waal

Frans de Waal Quotes

Primatologist

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Famous Frans de Waal Quotes

“The possibility that empathy is part of our primate heritage ought to makes us happy, but we're not in the habit of embracing our nature. When people commit genocide, we call them "animals". But when they give to the poor, we praise them for being "humane". We like to claim the latter behavior for ourselves.”

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Book:Our Inner Ape: A Leading Primatologist Explains Why We Are Who We Are
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“Having escaped the Dark Ages in which animals were mere stimulus-response machines, we are free to contemplate their mental lives. It is a great leap forward, the one that Griffin fought for. But now that animal cognition is an increasingly popular topic, we are still facing the mindset that animal cognition can be only a poor substitute of what we humans have. It can’t be truly deep and amazing. Toward the end of a long career, many a scholar cannot resist shining a light on human talents by listing all the things we are capable of and animals not. From the human perspective, these conjectures may make a satisfactory read, but for anyone interested, as I am, in the full spectrum of cognitions on our planet, they come across as a colossal waste of time. What a bizarre animal we are that the only question we can ask in relation to our place in nature is “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the smartest of them all?”

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Book:Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?
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“As in a Russian doll, however, the outer layers always contain an inner core. Instead of evolution having replaced simpler forms of empathy with more advanced ones, the latter are merely elaborations on the former and remain dependent on them. This also means that empathy comes naturally to us. It is not something we only learn later in life, or that is culturally constructed.”

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Author:Frans de Waal
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“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!”

IfsTryingFirstsHumansDifferentSometimesMightKnownImagineViolenceHappenedEvolutionIntellectualEmpathyMalesCaringSexualityLandscapeDiscussionCooperationWarfareDominanceChimpanzeesHuman EvolutionBonobosMale Dominance
Book:Our Inner Ape: A Leading Primatologist Explains Why We Are Who We Are
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