Chimpanzee Politics: Power and Sex among Apes

Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
The great apes, like humans, can recognize themselves in mirrors. They communicate by sound and gesture, form bands along what can only be called political lines, and sometimes engage in what is very clearly organized warfare. (Less frequently, too, they practice cannibalism.) In Chimpanzee Politics Frans de Waal, a longtime student of simian behavior, analyzes the behavior of a captive tribe of chimpanzees, comparing its actions with those of ape societies in the wild. What he finds is often not pleasant: chimps seem capable of astonishing deviousness and savagery, which has obvious implications for the behavior their human cousins sometimes exhibit. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"An excellent book... Just as fresh and thought-provoking in 2008 as it was in 1983." -- Laelaps


Review

"Even more enlightening than Machiavelli's The Prince, this book describes power takeovers and social organizations in a chimpanzee colony... I'll never look at academic or corporate politics the same way." -- Jim Collins, Inc., reviewing a previous edition or volume


"Newt Gingrich has been an avid follower of de Waal's work for years. He has even placed de Waal's Chimpanzee Politics on his recommended reading list, along with better known texts such as the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, and the Federalist Papers. What secrets has Gingrich gleaned from our simian cousins? In short, how to win power by forming tactical coalitions and mounting fierce psychological attacks on those blocking the way... It's a strategy Gingrich aped in his assault on former Speaker Jim Wright." -- Business Week, reviewing a previous edition or volume


"Schmoozing. Scheming. Consensus building. You won't glean these management techniques from any business text. But you can't run your company without them. Take it from the apes... The author demonstrates that chimps are, in the broadest sense, political." -- Business Month, reviewing a previous edition or volume


"The best book ever written on the social life of apes in captivity... The author has that special empathetic insight into the mind of the chimpanzee which is shared by few but can somehow be recognized by many." -- Human Ethology Newsletter, reviewing a previous edition or volume


"Precise but eminently readable and indeed exciting... This excellent book achieves the dual goal which eludes so many writers about animal behavior -- it will both fascinate the nonspecialist and be seen as an important contribution to science." -- Times Literary Supplement, reviewing a previous edition or volume


"When I first read this book, I was in Dar es Salaam with Jane Goodall. I had just returned from observing chimpanzees for two weeks at Gombe. After the real-life experience, I expected a book about chimpanzee behavior -- and at a zoo, at that -- to make rather dull reading. But I was in for a surprise. De Waal's Chimpanzee Politics is as much fun as a tree full of wild chimps." -- American Journal of Primatology, reviewing a previous edition or volume


Product Description

The first edition of Frans de Waal's Chimpanzee Politics was acclaimed not only by primatologists for its scientific achievement but also by politicians, business leaders, and social psychologists for its remarkable insights into the most basic human needs and behaviors. Twenty-five years later, this book is considered a classic. Featuring a new preface that includes recent insights from the author, this anniversary edition is a detailed and thoroughly engrossing account of rivalries and coalitions -- actions governed by intelligence rather than instinct. As we watch the chimpanzees of Arnhem behave in ways we recognize from Machiavelli (and from the nightly news), de Waal reminds us again that the roots of politics are older than humanity.


Language Notes
Text: English, Dutch (translation) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

Frans de Waal is the C. H. Candler Professor of Primate Behavior at Emory University in Atlanta and the director of the Living Links Center at the Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center. His books include The Ape and the Sushi Master; Peacemaking among Primates; and Our Inner Ape.

Primates and Philosophers: How Morality Evolved

Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Celebrated primatologist de Waal expands on his earlier work in Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals to argue that human traits of fairness, reciprocity and altruism develop through natural selection. Based on his 2004 Tanner Lectures at Princeton, this book argues that our morality grows out of the social instincts we share with bonobos, chimpanzees and apes. De Waal criticizes what he calls the "veneer theory," which holds that human ethics is simply an overlay masking our "selfish and brutish nature." De Waal draws on his own work with primates to illustrate the evolution of morality. For example, chimpanzees are more favorably disposed to others who have performed a service for them (such as grooming) and more likely to share their food with these individuals. In three appendixes, de Waal ranges briefly over anthropomorphism, apes and a theory of mind, and animal rights. The volume also includes responses to de Waal by Robert Wright, Christine M. Korsgaard, Philip Kitcher and Peter Singer. Although E.O. Wilson and Robert Wright have long contended that altruism is a product of evolution, de Waal demonstrates through his empirical work with primates the evolutionary basis for ethics. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Scientific American
It was not until a year and a half after his voyage on board the Beagle that Charles Darwin first came face to face with an ape. He was standing by the giraffe house at the London Zoo on a warm day in late March of 1838. The zoo had just acquired an orangutan named Jenny. One of the keepers was teasing her—showing her an apple, refusing to hand it over. Poor Jenny "threw herself on her back, kicked & cried, precisely like a naughty child," Darwin wrote in a letter to his sister. In the secret notebooks that he kept after the voyage, Darwin was speculating about evolution from every angle, including the emotional, and he was fascinated by Jenny’s tantrum. What is it like to be an ape? Does an orangutan’s frustration feel a lot like ours? Might she cherish some sense of right and wrong? Will an ape despair because her keeper is breaking the rules—because he is just not playing fair? Our own species has been talking, volubly and passionately, for at least 50,000 years, and it’s a fair guess that arguments about right and wrong were prominent in our conversation pretty much from the beginning. We started writing things down 5,000 years ago, and some of our first texts were codes of ethics. Our innumerable volumes of scripture and law, our Departments of Justice, High Courts, Low Courts, and Courts of Common Pleas are unique in the living world. But did we human beings invent our feeling for justice, or is it part of the package of primal emotions that we inherited from our ancestors? In other words: Did morality evolve? Dutch-born psychologist, ethologist and primatologist Frans de Waal has spent his career watching the behavior of apes and monkeys, mostly captive troupes in zoos. As a young student, he sat on a wooden stool day after day for six years, observing a colony of chimpanzees at the Arnhem Zoo. Today he watches chimpanzees from an observation post at Emory University’s Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Atlanta and at other zoos and primate centers. His work, along with primatologist Jane Goodall’s, has helped lift Darwin’s conjectures about the evolution of morality to a new level. He has documented tens of thousands of instances of chimpanzee behavior that among ourselves we would call Machiavellian and about as many moments that we would call altruistic, even noble. In his scientific papers and popular books (including Chimpanzee Politics, Our Inner Ape and Good Natured), he argues that Darwin was correct from that first glimpse of Jenny at the zoo. Sympathy, empathy, right and wrong are feelings that we share with other animals; even the best part of human nature, the part that cares about ethics and justice, is also part of nature. De Waal’s latest book, Primates and Philosophers, is based on the Tanner Lectures that he delivered at Princeton University’s Center for Human Values in 2004. In this book he tries—as he has many times before—to refute a popular caricature of Darwinism. Many people assume that to be good, be nice, behave, play well with others, we have to rise above our animal nature. It’s a dog-eat dog world out there—or, as the Romans put it, homo homini lupus, man is wolf to man (a curious proverb for a people whose founding myth was the suckling by a wolf of the infant twins Romulus and Remus). Thomas Henry Huxley, Darwin’s self-appointed bulldog, promoted this dark, cold view of life in a famous lecture, Evolution and Ethics. "The ethical progress of society depends, not on imitating the cosmic process, still less in running away from it, but in combating it," he declared. In Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, Ivan puts it another way: if there is no God, then we are lost in a moral chaos. "Everything is permitted." De Waal calls this "Veneer Theory." In this view, human morality is a thin crust on a churning urn of boiling funk. In reality, de Waal reminds us, dogs are social, wolves are social, chimps and macaques are social, and we ourselves are "social to the core." Goodness, generosity and genuine kindness come just as naturally to us as meaner feelings. We didn’t have to invent compassion. When our ancestors began writing down the first codes of conduct, precepts, laws and commandments, they were elaborating on feelings that evolved thousands or even millions of years before they were born. "Instead of empathy being an endpoint," de Waal writes, "it may have been the starting point." Back in the 1950s and 1960s, when animal psychologists talked about "sympathy" and "empathy," they always put those words between quotation marks, de Waal notes. Now he wants to take away the quotation marks. He describes one of his best-known demonstrations that animals care about fairness. In the experiment, he had pairs of capuchin monkeys perform simple tasks in their cages. For successfully completing each task they would get a reward, sometimes a slice of cucumber, sometimes a grape. All the monkeys would work for and eat the cucumber slices, but they preferred grapes. If one monkey kept getting paid in cucumber and it could see that its partner in the next cage was getting grapes, it would get mad, like Darwin’s Jenny. After a while the monkey would refuse to eat or throw the cucumber right out of the cage. Is de Waal right about all this? In the second half of Primates and Philosophers, his arguments are critiqued by a series of commentators, all of whom have written important studies of evolutionary ethics. They cite Freud, Kant, Hume, Nietzsche and Adam Smith. They circle and circle around those pairs of capuchin monkeys: "A capuchin rejects a cucumber when her partner is offered a grape—is she protesting the unfairness, or is she just holding out for a grape?" writes Christine M. Korsgaard, Arthur Kingsley Porter Professor of Philosophy at Harvard University. "Of course, if the lucky capuchin were to throw down the grape until his comrade had a similar reward, that would be very interesting!" writes Philip Kitcher, John Dewey Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University. They disagree, they discuss, they bicker a little, like all primates and philosophers. They illuminate not only ageless questions of ethics but also current concerns such as the Geneva convention and "why universal empathy is such a fragile proposal," as de Waal writes in his response to his critics. By the end of the book it seems clear that we can no longer look at morality as a sort of civilized veneer on a cold and selfish animal, even though that view goes back long before Darwin went to the zoo. Its origin lies in the Western concept of original sin—when Adam and Eve ate their first apple.

Jonathan Weiner won a Pulitzer Prize in 1995 for The Beak of the Finch. He teaches science writing in Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.
From Booklist
Primatologist de Waal's career has been devoted to demonstrating that nature isn't utterly red in tooth and claw. His Tanner Lectures in Human Values argue that for the great apes and humans, in particular, morality isn't a veneer masking self-interest. It is intrinsic, the evolutionary outcome of the fact that altruism is conducive to species survival. Darwin, who saw no "conflict between the harshness of the evolutionary process and the gentleness of some of its products" and who affirmed the developmental similarity of species, including humans, essentially held the same position, de Waal says, being influenced toward it by Scottish moral philosopher Adam Smith. There is more to de Waal's exceptionally rich but always lucid paper, notably including an appendix, one of three, on animal rights. Four philosophers--one the controversial ethicist and advocate for animals Peter Singer--critique aspects of de Waal's argument, and in conclusion, de Waal responds to them. Intellectual soul food for biology-minded ethicists, in particular. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
"Goodness, generosity and genuine kindness come just as naturally to us as meaner feelings. We didn't have to invent compassion." -- Jonathan Weiner, Scientific American

"Morality has been demystified. Wrested from the hands of philosophers, it has become an ordinary object of scientific inquiry." -- Oliver Curry, Times Higher Education Supplement

"Primates and Philosophers has the spontaneity of a good conversation." -- David Sloan Wilson, American Scientist

Review
Frans de Waal defends against philosopher critics his view that the roots of morality can be seen in the social behavior of monkeys and apes. . . . [H]e argues that human morality would be impossible without certain emotional buildings blocks that are clearly at work in chimps and monkey societies. . . . Dr. de Waal sees human morality as having grown out of primate sociality, but with two extra levels of sophistication. People enforce their society's moral codes much more rigorously with rewards, punishments and reputation building. They also apply a degree of judgment and reason, for which there are no parallels in animals.
(Nicholas Wade The New York Times )

De Waal is one of the world's foremost authorities on nonhuman primates, and his thoughtful contribution to Primates and Philosophers is enriched by decades of close observation of their behavior. . . . He argues that humans are like their closest evolutionary kin in being moral by nature. . . . [A]n impressively well-focused collection of essays.
(John Gray New York Review of Books )

Celebrated primatologist Frans de Waal . . . demonstrates through his empirical work with primates the evolutionary basis for ethics.
(Publishers Weekly )

Frans de Waal . . . argues that . . . morality is actually a gift from animal ancestors and that people are good not by choice but by nature. . . . He argues that . . . critics fail to recognize that while animals are not human, humans are animals.
(Science News )

Dutch-born psychologist, ethologist and primatologist Frans de Waal has spent his career watching the behavior of apes and monkeys, mostly captive troupes in zoos. . . . His work . . . has helped lift Darwin's conjectures about the evolution of morality to a new level. . . . [De Waal argues that] sympathy, empathy, right and wrong are feelings that we share with other animals; even the best part of human nature, the part that cares about ethics and justice, is also part of nature.
(Jonathan Weiner Scientific American )

Frans de Waal . . . show[s] how elements of morality such as empathy, sympathy, community concern and a sense of fairness also exist in our closest primate relatives.
(David Sloan Wilson American Scientist )

Exceptionally rich but always lucid. . . . Intellectual soul food for biology-minded ethicists.
(Ray Olsen Booklist )

In his new book, Primates and Philosophers, Frans de Waal argues that the origins of human goodness can be seen in apes and monkeys. He claims that we have evolved from a long line of social animals for whom close co-operation is 'not an option but a survival strategy'. Not only are we nice by nature, but our ancestors were too, ever since they came down from the proverbial trees.
(Stephen Cave Financial Times )

Frans de Waal, an acclaimed primatologist, has much to say about what he considers the biological origins of morality. Unlike many recent antireligion writers such as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett, who use the latest socio-biological research to campaign against religion, de Waal has no antireligious agenda. This both keeps his writing more focused and helps him avoid many of the argumentative errors of Dawkins and company...De Waal is a keen social observer, but he focuses mostly on what we can learn from what he knows best-the study of primates, including the human variety.
(Joe Pettit Commonweal )

Review
Frans de Waal has achieved that state of grace for a scientist--doing research that is both rigorous and wildly creative, and in the process has redefined how we think about the most interesting realms of behavior among nonhuman primates--cooperation, reconciliation, a sense of fairness, and even the rudiments of morality. In these Tanner lectures and the subsequent dialogue with leading philosophers and evolutionary psychologists, de Waal takes this knowledge to redefine how we think of morality in another primate, namely ourselves. This is superb and greatly challenging thinking.
(Robert M. Sapolsky, author of "Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers" and "A Primate's Memoir" )

Product Description

"It's the animal in us," we often hear when we've been bad. But why not when we're good? Primates and Philosophers tackles this question by exploring the biological foundations of one of humanity's most valued traits: morality.

In this provocative book, primatologist Frans de Waal argues that modern-day evolutionary biology takes far too dim a view of the natural world, emphasizing our "selfish" genes. Science has thus exacerbated our reciprocal habits of blaming nature when we act badly and labeling the good things we do as "humane." Seeking the origin of human morality not in evolution but in human culture, science insists that we are moral by choice, not by nature.

Citing remarkable evidence based on his extensive research of primate behavior, de Waal attacks "Veneer Theory," which posits morality as a thin overlay on an otherwise nasty nature. He explains how we evolved from a long line of animals that care for the weak and build cooperation with reciprocal transactions. Drawing on both Darwin and recent scientific advances, de Waal demonstrates a strong continuity between human and animal behavior. In the process, he also probes issues such as anthropomorphism and human responsibilities toward animals.

Based on the Tanner Lectures de Waal delivered at Princeton University's Center for Human Values in 2004, Primates and Philosophers includes responses by the philosophers Peter Singer, Christine M. Korsgaard, and Philip Kitcher and the science writer Robert Wright. They press de Waal to clarify the differences between humans and other animals, yielding a lively debate that will fascinate all those who wonder about the origins and reach of human goodness.


From the Inside Flap

"Frans de Waal has achieved that state of grace for a scientist--doing research that is both rigorous and wildly creative, and in the process has redefined how we think about the most interesting realms of behavior among nonhuman primates--cooperation, reconciliation, a sense of fairness, and even the rudiments of morality. In these Tanner lectures and the subsequent dialogue with leading philosophers and evolutionary psychologists, de Waal takes this knowledge to redefine how we think of morality in another primate, namely ourselves. This is superb and greatly challenging thinking."--Robert M. Sapolsky, author of Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers and A Primate's Memoir

"On the basis of a fascinating and provocative account of the remarkable continuities between the social emotions of humans and of nonhuman primates, de Waal develops a compelling case--which moral philosophers would do well to take seriously--for the evolutionary roots of human morality. In addition, he and his commentators conduct an illuminating discussion of some fundamental methodological and ethical issues--such as whether it is necessarily illicit to characterize animal behavior 'anthropomorphically,' and whether it is reasonable to attribute 'rights' to animals. Anyone who is interested in these issues, and especially those interested in the sources of human morality, will find this book exceptionally challenging and worthwhile."--Harry Frankfurt, author of On Bullshit

"Frans de Waal is the perfect guide to the emerging data on moral-like behavior in animals. Strengthened by deep sensitivity to the complexity of social relations and by a strong defense of anthropomorphism, this book shows how evolutionary biology can contribute to moral philosophy not merely through general principles, but by specific phylogenetic comparisons. It is a major advance in the socialization of ethology."--Richard Wrangham, Harvard University, coauthor of Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence

"Here, Frans de Waal, the world's leading researcher on primate behavior, a highly reflective thinker, and a skilled writer, presents the fruits of thirty years of empirical research. Addressing some of the most fundamental issues of social science and moral theory, he and the commentators produce a book that will be of deep and enduring interest to philosophers, social and political theorists, and anyone who wishes to assess their views about human nature and the nature of morality."--John Gray, London School of Economics, author of Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals

"This important book centers on Frans de Waal's powerful statement about the psychological nature of moral behavior, which involves strong continuities between humans and apes."--Christopher Boehm, University of Southern California, author of Hierarchy in the Forest


From the Back Cover

"Frans de Waal has achieved that state of grace for a scientist--doing research that is both rigorous and wildly creative, and in the process has redefined how we think about the most interesting realms of behavior among nonhuman primates--cooperation, reconciliation, a sense of fairness, and even the rudiments of morality. In these Tanner lectures and the subsequent dialogue with leading philosophers and evolutionary psychologists, de Waal takes this knowledge to redefine how we think of morality in another primate, namely ourselves. This is superb and greatly challenging thinking."--Robert M. Sapolsky, author of Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers and A Primate's Memoir

"On the basis of a fascinating and provocative account of the remarkable continuities between the social emotions of humans and of nonhuman primates, de Waal develops a compelling case--which moral philosophers would do well to take seriously--for the evolutionary roots of human morality. In addition, he and his commentators conduct an illuminating discussion of some fundamental methodological and ethical issues--such as whether it is necessarily illicit to characterize animal behavior 'anthropomorphically,' and whether it is reasonable to attribute 'rights' to animals. Anyone who is interested in these issues, and especially those interested in the sources of human morality, will find this book exceptionally challenging and worthwhile."--Harry Frankfurt, author of On Bullshit

"Frans de Waal is the perfect guide to the emerging data on moral-like behavior in animals. Strengthened by deep sensitivity to the complexity of social relations and by a strong defense of anthropomorphism, this book shows how evolutionary biology can contribute to moral philosophy not merely through general principles, but by specific phylogenetic comparisons. It is a major advance in the socialization of ethology."--Richard Wrangham, Harvard University, coauthor of Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence

"Here, Frans de Waal, the world's leading researcher on primate behavior, a highly reflective thinker, and a skilled writer, presents the fruits of thirty years of empirical research. Addressing some of the most fundamental issues of social science and moral theory, he and the commentators produce a book that will be of deep and enduring interest to philosophers, social and political theorists, and anyone who wishes to assess their views about human nature and the nature of morality."--John Gray, London School of Economics, author of Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals

"This important book centers on Frans de Waal's powerful statement about the psychological nature of moral behavior, which involves strong continuities between humans and apes."--Christopher Boehm, University of Southern California, author of Hierarchy in the Forest


About the Author
Frans de Waal is C. H. Candler Professor of Primate Behavior in the Department of Psychology, and Director of the Living Links Center at the Yerkes National Primate Center, both at Emory University. In 2007, "Time" magazine selected him as one of the 100 People Who Shape Our World. His books include "Our Inner Ape" (Riverhead) and "The Ape and the Sushi Master" (Basic Books), both "New York Times" Notable Books of the Year.

Our Inner Ape

More Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
Power, sex, violence and kindness: these four broad-spectrum categories encompass much of human behavior, so it's only fitting that they're also the primary subject material for Frans de Waal's (The Ape and The Sushi Master) book Our Inner Ape. The few (but deeply detailed) chapters are a mesmerizing read that spans biology, child psychology, postmodern theorists and fundamental morality, using tales of stern chimps, and sexy bonobos to examine humans' place between them. In the process, he examines why we need to know our place in the world, how our body language communicates feelings, and where the roots of empathy lie in mammalian life.

De Waal's respect for both his readers and his research subjects come shining through in the simple clarity he uses when describing both the endless sex of bonobo apes and the heartrending violence occasionally present in chimp hierarchal structure. By illustrating his points with a mixture of straight-from-research experiences and jokes at the expense of modern politicians, he keeps his ideas compelling for anyone with a basic understanding of evolutionary science without drifting towards the academic drone that could be expected of by a researcher of his experience.

You won't find specific conclusions concerning human nature, but instead a gentle, almost rambling look at two primate species with vastly different social networks and how, perhaps, humanity can learn from each to our benefit. A few of de Waal's lovely duotone photos (My Family Album: 30 Years of Primate Photography grace the end of the book, featuring close-up shots of the folks he's been writing about--chimps like Yeroen, Nikkie and Mama, and bonobo Kuif and adopted daughter Roosje are downright thrilling to see after reading such interesting stories about their lives. Jill Lightner

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Noted primatologist de Waal (Chimpanzee Politics) thinks human behavior cannot be fully explained by selfish genes and Darwinian competition. Drawing on his own primate research on chimpanzees and bonobos—our closest animal relatives—he shows how much we can learn from them about ourselves: our qualities of "fellow feeling and empathy" as well as our power-obsessed, violent side. We are "bipolar apes," de Waal says, as much like bonobos as like chimps. The latter are known for their viciousness and "red in tooth and claw" social politics, but bonobos offer a radically different social model, one of peace and hedonistic orgies; de Waal offers vivid, often delightful stories of politics, sex, violence and kindness in the ape communities he has studied to illustrate such questions as why we are irreverent toward the powerful and whether men or women are better at conflict resolution. Readers might be surprised at how much these apes and their stories resonate with their own lives, and may well be left with an urge to spend a few hours watching primates themselves at the local zoo.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Scientific American
No man is an island. In fact, people are less happy and healthy alone than when they are in a group--of kin, of countrymen or indeed of anybody with whom they can identify, however fleetingly. But tribes are tricky, at once so solid and yet so evanescent--je suis Marxiste, runs the apocryphal French graffito, tendance Groucho. We switch allegiance from one Thousand-Year Reich to another at the drop of the hat. At the dictates of some distant demagogue, your good neighbor can become a deadly foe. On July 7, 2005, suicide bombers blew themselves up on three London subway trains and a bus, killing themselves and more than 50 other people in the cause of radical Islam. The abiding horror is that the bombers were not foreign insurgents--Them--but were British, born and raised; in Margaret Thatcher's defining phrase, One of Us. The crisis of tribal identity that the horror unleashed will, eventually, change the characteristics of what we mean by "Britishness," qualifying the laissez-faire multicultural consensus that has held for the past half a century. Such is the mutability of tribes, entities forever changing with reference to one another, and the protean subject of David Berreby's brave book. Berreby's quest is to understand what he sees as a fundamental human urge to classify and identify with "human kinds." We project this urge onto what we see. Are races and human kinds real? The fact that they change all the time, and we can switch from one to another so easily, suggests not. Instead, Berreby says, our ideas of the "human-kind code" are based "on facts about how we relate to [other] people at the moment we categorize them--what we want, or expect, or fear from them." Having an inbuilt facility to distinguish between Us and Them was a valuable resource, related to that essential ability to create artificial groupings from what, to a robot, would be entirely distinct objects. We take this talent for granted, but what would life be like if we lacked it: if we were like Funes, the cripple created by Jorge Luis Borges in his story Funes the Memorious--a man with mental recall so powerful that he could not stand back and objectify what he saw? Funes saw each dog, each leaf, each cloud as sui generis: his inability to form categories left him utterly unable to make sense of the world. This vital trick serves us well. But when applied to people, it can cause problems, especially when different kinds of people are all mixed up together, as they are in London, one of the most polyglot cities on the planet. The current crisis swirling around Islam and Britishness, what some see as a symptom of the imminent failure of the multicultural consensus, could have been predicted by the fate of the "contact" hypothesis, in which prejudice is meant to be weakened by familiarity. That foreign-looking man in the hooded jacket will be less threatening if you know he's just Bernie from next door. Most scholars now think, Berreby says, that the contact hypothesis is a muddle: "Actual contact sometimes makes people more prejudiced. On many American college campuses ... the emphasis on di?versity has led students to join one of these diverse human kinds and shun much contact with the others." Bernie could be your friend for life--or your worst enemy. Do we remain forever prey to our irrepressible urges to classify, to create outcasts, Untermenschen, untouchables? Because "human kinds" are epiphenomena, results of unspoken contracts between fickle human minds and changeful reality, we can rise above them. "Human kinds exist because of human minds," Berreby concludes. "But how you choose to live with them is up to you." We can actively choose the kinds we want, for evil or for good. Since the bombings, London mayor Ken Livingstone has had posters put up all over the city promoting our unity. "Seven Million Londoners," it reads, "Only One London." Livingstone, like Margaret Thatcher at the opposite end of the political spectrum, is a consummate politician who knows how to play on our instincts. In times of universal crisis and brouhaha, what we really need is a sense of perspective. Our Inner Ape, written by a scientist with a lifetime's experience around apes, is perhaps the most humane treatment of the human condition you can read, for all that it is mostly about chimpanzees. So-called common (but extremely rare) chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) live in male-dominated societies characterized by shifting allegiances and extreme violence. So far, so Berreby. Their close cousins, the even less frequent pygmy chimps, or bonobos (P. paniscus), live in matriarchal societies where the stress is on reconciliation, all anxieties smoothed over by liberal applications of sex, in all possible combinations. If chimps are from Mars, bonobos are from Venus. Really? It's tempting to see these creatures as cartoon characters, caricatures of ourselves, done up as clowns or, more seriously, as metaphors for the human condition. De Waal plays this up to engage our interest but is at pains not to overdo it. Chimps and bonobos are not Looney Tunes humans; neither are they human ancestors, but creatures with a long evolutionary history of their own, which has provoked its own adaptive responses, its own repertoire of behaviors. Chimps are many things, but they are not One of Us. The essential difference between humans and chimpanzees is that we form nuclear families, whereas chimps, so human in many ways, have no such institution. Although we stray from the path more often than we care to admit, human society is all about the age-old business of boy meets girl and sets up home under a roof, so much so that it explains such things as the size of our testicles, the manifest oddities of the female reproductive system, and why we prefer to have sex in private. At root, we define ourselves with reference to our families and closest kin and work outward from there. But we can learn a great deal more of our own humanity by comparing ourselves with something closely related but still Other. And this, in the final analysis, is the lesson of both books. Tribal allegiance means nothing unless there are other tribes out there against which we can get our measure.

Henry Gee, who lives in London, is a senior editor of Nature and former Regents' Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is author of The Science of Middle-earth (Cold Spring Press, 2004) and Jacob's Ladder: The History of the Human Genome (W. W. Norton, 2004).

From Booklist
*Starred Review* In Chimpanzee Politics (1982) and five succeeding books, de Waal has called attention to how close to human Homo sapiens ' closest relatives really are; indeed, the domestic entity referenced by the title of de Waal's photo collection My Family Album (2003) isn't his particular menage; it's that of the chimps and bonobos he has studied and grown to love. As his books have become more complete and general about human-ape resemblances, his prose has become ever clearer and more artful. This book is arguably an even better read than The Ape and the Sushi Master (2001). After a bringing-up-to-speed chapter on such matters as chimp-bonobo distinctions and human-ape shared ancestry, de Waal devotes long chapters to power, sex, violence, and kindness among the apes, and among humans, too. Comparing the three upper primate species, and occasionally certain monkey species, as well, yields illuminating and provocative results because they are all highly social, and the apes share cultural capability with humans. Overall, chimps are more concerned with power and more violent but much less sexy than bonobos, and both apes demonstrate kindness socially to a greater extent than humans do, at least verbally. In conclusion, de Waal turns directly to "The Bipolar Ape"--that is, the human being--and urges learning from the apes how to improve humanity's longtime balancing act between savagery and good fellowship. Ray Olson
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Review
De Waal is perhaps the most literate, entertaining, and soulful of the cognitive ethologists. -- Los Angeles Times

De Waal's most hopeful message is that peaceful behavior can be learned.... [An] important and illuminating book... -- New York Times Book Review, October 9, 2005

Review
De Waal is perhaps the most literate, entertaining, and soulful of the cognitive ethologists. (Los Angeles Times)

Product Description
From "one of the world's greatest experts on primate behavior" (Desmond Morris) comes a look at the most provocative aspects of human nature--power, sex, violence, kindness, and morality--through our closest cousins. For nearly twenty years, Frans De Waal has studied both the famously aggressive chimpanzee and the egalitarian, matriarchal bonobo, two species whose DNA is nearly identical to ours. The result is an engrossing narrative that reveals what their behavior can teach us about ourselves.

About the Author
Frans de Waal, Ph.D., is a biologist and ethologist, world-renowned for his work on the social intelligence of primates such as chimpanzees, bonobos, capuchins, and macaques. He is credited with the discovery of reconciliation in chimpanzees, and is the founder of the field of conflict resolution research in animals. He was the first scientist to show that apes resolve conflicts, cooperate, and console one another. He is the author of five previous books, which have been translated into fourteen languages, including The Ape and the Sushi Master, a New York Times Notable Book, and Peacemaking Among Primates, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Award. De Waal is currently C. H. Candler Professor in the Psychology Department of Emory University and Director of the Living Links Center at the Yerkes Primate Center in Atlanta, Georgia.