Quotes from Frans de Waal

citrus fruits are poisonous to canines),

T]he term 'nonhuman' grates on me, since it lumps millions of species together by an absence, as if they were missing something. Poor things, they are nonhuman! When students embrace this jargon in their writing, I cannot resist sarcastic corrections in the margin saying that for completeness's sake, they should add that the animals they are talking about are also nonpenguin, nonhyena, and a whole lot more.

the kingmaker. He regained both prestige and fresh mating opportunities.

With a bully for a leader, the group seems to wait for a challenger and eagerly support him if he stands a chance.

All that nature can offer is information and inspiration, not prescription.

His reaction looked very much like anger, with threatening gestures, raised voice, and a purple face. But his anger was triggered by apprehension and was mixed with hope that some good discipline might keep me from being so stupid again. It sure did! My point here is that every display of emotion needs to be judged in a wider context. A single label rarely suffices. To call my father's state "angry" fails to do it justice without also mentioning love and worry.

So much for Western origin stories, which depict our forebears as ferocious, fearless, and free. Unbound by social commitments and merciless toward their enemies, they seem to have stepped straight out of your typical action movie. Present-day political thought keeps clinging to these macho myths, such as the belief that we can treat the planet any way we want, that humanity will be waging war forever, and that individual freedom takes precedence over community.

We can't return to this preindustrial way of life. We live in societies of a mind-boggling scale and complexity that demand quite a different organization than humans ever enjoyed in their state of nature. Yet, even though we live in cities and are surrounded by cars and computers, we remain essentially the same animals with the same psychological wants and needs.

The credo of experimental science remains that an absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

And then there was our Siamese cat, Sarah, who had been adopted as a kitten by our big tomcat, Diego, who would lick and clean her, let her knead his tummy as if she were nursing, and sleep with her. For about a decade they were best buddies, until Diego died of old age. Even though Sarah was younger and in perfect health, she stopped eating and died two months after Diego for no reason that the veterinarian could determine.

humans are a strange lot. We have the power to analyze and explore the world around us, yet panic as soon as the evidence threatens to violate our expectations.

En nuestra especie, la atracción por la juventud tiene sentido debido a nuestro vínculo de pareja que conduce a familias estables. Las mujeres jóvenes están más disponibles y son más valiosas por la larga vida reproductiva que tienen por delante. De ahí el eterno anhelo femenino por parecer joven a base de bótox, implantes, estiramientos faciales y demás.

En origen, un velatorio era un período en el que los dolientes se mantenían en velo junto a una persona muerta en su casa. Es muy probable que los velatorios empezaran a practicarse con la esperanza de que la persona amada volviera a la vida, o para tener la certeza absoluta de que estaba muerta antes del entierro.

Para sobrellevar la pérdida, y aliviar nuestro propio terror a la mortalidad, a menudo contemplamos la muerte como una transición a otra vida. No tenemos evidencia de esta notable innovación mental en ningún otro animal.

large-scale breeding experiments.

Nosotros evolucionamos a partir de comedores de fruta arborícolas - de ahí nuestros ojos frontales, nuestra visión de color y nuestras manos prensoras-, pero nuestro tamaño y nuestras aptitudes especiales nos confieren un porte depredador. Probablemente es por esto por lo que nos llevamos tan bien con nuestras mascotas favoritas, que son dos carnívoros peludos.

Fishing cooperatives,

They would herd the large whale into shallow waters close to a whaling vessel, allowing the whalers to harpoon the harassed leviathan. Once the whale was killed, the orcas would be given one day to consume their preferred delicacy—its tongue and lips—after which the whalers would collect their prize. Here too humans gave names to their preferred orca partners and recognized the tit-for-tat that is the foundation of all cooperation, human as well as animal.45

We develop a plan and put a hierarchy in place to manage its execution, which allows us to lay a railroad track across the country or build a huge cathedral that takes generations to complete.

Mechanism and function are the eternal yin and yang of biology: they interact and intertwine, yet there is no greater sin than confusing the two.

Behavior doesn't fossilize. This is why speculations about human prehistory are often based on what we know about other primates. Their behavior indicates the range of behavior our ancestors may have shown.

Traditionally, primatologists looked at alpha males as those who succeeded in spreading their genes. But in making this point, we relied entirely on observed sexual activity. The more we saw a male mate, the more offspring he sired, we thought. This assumption proved flawed. While alpha males have no qualms about mounting females in the open, other males often get busy out of sight and at night.

The influence of the recent past is always overestimated. When we are asked to name the greatest human inventions we tend to think of the telephone, the electric light bulb and the silicon chip rather than the wheel, the plough and the taming of fire.

Since we routinely express ideas and feelings in language, we may be forgiven for assigning a role to it, but isn't it remarkable how often we struggle to find our words? It's not that we don't know what we thought or felt, but we just can't put our verbal finger on it. This would of course be wholly unnecessary if thoughts and feelings were linguistic products to begin with. In that case, we'd expect a waterfall of words!