Our Inner Ape
The New York Times points to a fascinating book, Our Inner Ape by Frans De Waal. This book compares human social behavior with two species of apes: chimpanzees and bonobos. Here are some excerpts from the review:
Bonobos live in a relatively peaceful matriarchy; when conflicts do arise, instead of fighting they often use sexual activity to resolve them, defusing the aggression with friendly physical contact.So interesting.
Chimp society, however, is a male-dominated hierarchy based on power. Unlike the gentle bonobos, who seldom kill, chimps will hunt for meat and even kill members of rival groups.
de Waal suggests that the two species represent sides of our own nature speculating that humans may act like a hybrid of bonobos and chimps.
Kuni, a bonobo at a zoo in Britain, helped an injured starling that had crashed into the glass of her enclosure. She picked it up and tried to set it on its feet, then climbed a tree and carefully spread its wings to help it to fly before she released it.
Where the two ape species diverge most are in the realms of sex and violence. Bonobos don't exactly distinguish between sex and friendly touching.
Infanticide, de Waal tells us, is a leading cause of death among chimps, both in zoos and in the wild.
Like humans, chimps can be ruthless toward individuals who are not part of their troop. De Waal explains that large-brained animals capable of using empathy to do kind things for others are also capable of great cruelty, because they can imagine what their victims will feel.
De Waal compares this horrible chimp behavior to genocide in Rwanda and Bosnia.
Genetic implications of many of his observations. . .
Animals who have high-fear genetics are less inclined to be aggressive because they are afraid to fight, and stressful, scary situations can affect them more dramatically. When bombs fell on Munich during World War II, de Waal tells us, all the bonobos in the zoo died of heart failure, but all the chimps survived.
De Waal's most hopeful message is that peaceful behavior can be learned, as he showed when he raised juvenile rhesus and stumptail monkeys together. The aggressive rhesus juveniles picked up peaceful ways of resolving conflict from the larger, gentler stumptails. And the lessons took: even after the two species were separated, the rhesus continued to have three times more grooming and other friendly behavior after fights
