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SCIENCE & THEOLOGY NEWS

DECEMBER, 2005

De Waal gets us in touch with ‘Our Inner Ape’

Our Inner Ape
Frans de Waal
New York. Riverhead Books, 2005.
274 pages.$24.95 hardcover.

I was two years old when I first realized exactly how similar we are to our closest primate kin. At dinner one night, my brother disappeared into his room and returned carrying a poster displaying an ape menagerie. One particular male stood out of the bunch. It was my dad — give or take some back hair and a protruding muzzle. Everyone laughed at the uncanny resemblance, and the merciless teasing began. I, however, never forgot the expression staring back at me from that poster that may well have followed a final warning to clean my plate.

The 98 percent of our DNA we share with apes is only the beginning of our resemblance, according to primatologist Frans de Waal, director of the Living Links Center at Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Atlanta. Using examples from history, politics, literature and pop culture, de Waal walks us through our primate parallel universe in Our Inner Ape.

This most recent of de Waal’s books is a page-turner filled with all the intrigue of TheGodfather movies: sex, politics, murder and reconciliation. It’s an in-depth look at human nature that keeps the reader amazed, and perhaps amused, at humans’ similarities with apes.

We believe ourselves to have evolved and transcended animal behavior, says de Waal, but we’re much more like our simian cousins than we may want to admit.

“We would much rather blame nature for what we don’t like in ourselves than credit it for what we do like,” he writes.

This may explain why we consider men engaging in drunken bar brawls “animals,” and those who stop to help a stranger in distress altruistic and humane.

Both examples stem from animal behavior, de Waal explains. He recalls the case of Binti Jua, a female gorilla who tenderly cared for a three-year-old boy who had fallen into her enclosure at Chicago’s Brookfield Zoo until zoo staff could attend to him.

“The possibility that empathy is part of our primate heritage ought to make us happy, but we’re not in the habit of embracing our nature,” he writes. “It wasn’t until an ape saved a member of our own species that there was a public awakening to the possibility of nonhuman humaneness.”

Perhaps more riveting than the moving story of Binti Jua, however, is the way de Waal keeps us marveling at ourselves throughout the book. We become engaged with the stories of these primates, only to realize they reflect our own reality. With every tale he recounts, de Waal gives us tangible examples of these behaviors in our own lives.

Not unlike a certain U.S. president whose Oval Office scandal did not detract from his allure, high-ranking ape males have their pick of nearly any female in the colony.

“There are plenty of reminders of the connection between power and sex,” writes de Waal. “Sometimes, like during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, the connection is exposed with great fanfare and hypocrisy, but most people are realistic about the sex appeal of leaders and ignore their philandering.”

While females also have status rankings within a colony, they more often work as a team. All-important chick-bonding rituals — which for human women may include sleepovers, wine, gossip and often a movie that will inevitably render them weepy — are also present among lady chimps. This bonding also sets up strength in numbers.

“Female unity in the face of adversity is an ancient trait,” de Waal writes. “These coalitions can deliver such a beating that any male is in an understandable hurry to get out of their way. Since none of the females can match a male in speed and strength, solidarity is crucial.”

This section, aptly titled “Girl Power,” strongly resonated with me. Having attended Visitation Academy, an all-girl Catholic school in St. Louis, I observed this behavior firsthand. Although we never physically “beat” boys — though threats were not out of the question — we consistently put them in their place. Whatever catty issues may have been simmering among my group of friends, standing up for the girls always took precedence over anything a male did. We teamed together to outsmart them in debates, made them rethink their views on women as the weaker sex, and heaven save the lad who offended one of the “Viz” girls. A good friend of ours from a neighboring boys’ school even took to calling us the “Visit-cong.” In retrospect, it is amazing any of us had dates.

Though de Waal has written several other books on primate behavior, this is the first in which he focuses significantly on human behavior. The parallels he draws help bring us down a notch in our aggrandized superiority and helps us appreciate our primal instincts — good and bad. Conversely, he brings apes up in our esteem. Though many researchers who study animal behavior — particularly as it relates to human nature — focus on negative and violent tendencies, de Waal prefers to accentuate the positive.

Reconciliation has been a central theme throughout his 30-year career. “Reconciliation not only exists, it is extremely widespread among social animals,” he writes. “Our close relatives can teach us some important lessons here. They show us that compassion is not a recent weakness going against the grain of nature but a formidable power that is as much a part of who and what we are as the competitive tendencies it seeks to overcome.”

De Waal also asserts that we may find morality and empathy are not unique to humans, but are traits ingrained and observable in primates. Primates exhibit behaviors that indicate conflict resolution, the reciprocation of favors and the comprehension of situations from the perspective of others.

In Our Inner Ape, de Waal is able to cover nearly all the elements of primate behavior — both animal and human. This book is not only easily accessible to general readers, but also de Waal’s wit and breadth of cultural examples simply make it a great read. And in the end, we learn a lot more about ourselves than we may have imagined.

Bridging this gap in the roots of our behavior is at the heart of this book, says de Waal.

“[W]e see one of the most internally conflicted animals ever to walk the earth,” he writes of humans. “It is capable of unbelievable destruction of both its environment and its own kind, yet at the same time it possesses wells of empathy and love deeper than ever seen before. Since this animal has gained dominance over all others, it’s all the more important that it takes an honest look in the mirror, so that it knows both the archenemy it faces and the ally that stands ready to help it build a better world.”

Frederica Saylor is health editor at Science & Theology News.