Exclusive homosexuality is not very common in nature. Frans de Waal More Quotes by Frans de Waal More Quotes From Frans de Waal 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. Frans de Waal cat animal two Male chimpanzees have an extraordinarily strong drive for dominance. They're constantly jockeying for position. Frans de Waal dominance males strong Male bonobos really don't fit the human male ideal. Frans de Waal bonobos males fit I'm personally a nonbeliever, so I'm struggling with if we really need religion. Frans de Waal ifs struggle needs The sturdiest pillars of human morality are compassion and a sense of justice. Frans de Waal pillars compassion justice Empathy probably started out as a mechanism to improve maternal care. Mammalian mothers who were attentive to their young's needs were more likely to rear successful offspring. Frans de Waal empathy successful mother Human morality is unthinkable without empathy. Frans de Waal unthinkable empathy morality 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. Frans de Waal motivation compassion inspiration If I were God, I'd work on the reach of empathy. Frans de Waal generosity compassion love Robin Hood had it right.Humanity's deepest wish is to spread the wealth. Frans de Waal humanity wish robins Being both more systematically brutal than chimps and more empathetic than Frans de Waal bipolar selfishness peaceful 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. Frans de Waal empathy later-in-life mean Unlike the primate hand, the elephant's grasping organ is also its nose. Elephants use their trunks not only to reach food but also to sniff and touch it. With their unparalleled sense of smell, the animals know exactly what they are going for. Vision is secondary. Frans de Waal elephants animal hands 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. Frans de Waal ducks example animal 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. Frans de Waal exotic animal people In Africa, we have the bush meat trade, which means that, on a very large scale, animals are being killed in the forests and sold in the cities as a luxury food. Frans de Waal cities animal mean If you look at national economies today, for example, the American economy, the European economy, the Indians, the Chinese, we're all tied together. If one of them sinks, the rest are going to sink with them and if one floats, the rest are lifted up. I find that very interesting. Frans de Waal economy-today chinese interesting I was raised Catholic. Not just a little bit Catholic, like my wife, Catherine. When she was young, many Catholics in France already barely went to church, except for the big three: baptism, marriage, and funeral. And only the middle one was by choice. Frans de Waal funeral wife choices After World War II it was decided that, in order to prevent the Germans and the French from having another war, it would be better to tie them together into one economic pact so they would invest in each other and have mutual stakes. Until now, that has worked to prevent warfare between the two. Frans de Waal war two order We would much rather blame nature for what we don't like in ourselves than credit it for what we do like. Frans de Waal blame credit
