Frans de Waal: "The Age of Empathy: Nature's Lessons for a Kinder Society"

 

 

photo at Bonobos: our endangered 'cousins' in the heart of the Congo basin 

thanks alot to DrMarsha for introducing me to
Frans de Waal!
A conversation between Frans de Waal, author of "The Age of Empathy: Nature's Lessons for a Kinder Society," and Carl Zimmer, Discover magazine.
"Frans B.M. de Waal, PhD (born 29 October 1948, 's-Hertogenbosch), is a Dutch primatologist and ethologist. He is the Charles Howard Candler professor of Primate Behavior in the Emory University psychology department in Atlanta, Georgia, and director of the Living Links Center at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center[1] and author of numerous books including Chimpanzee Politics and Our Inner Ape. His research centers on primate social behavior, including conflict resolution, cooperation, inequity aversion, and food-sharing. He is a Member of the (US) National Academy of Sciences and the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences."wiki



more by frans waal on my favorite animal:
Bonobo Sex and Society

"My own interest in bonobos came not from an inherent fascination with their charms but from research on aggressive behavior in primates. I was particularly intrigued with the aftermath of conflict. After two chimpanzees have fought, for instance, they may come together for a hug and mouth-to-mouth kiss. Assuming that such reunions serve to restore peace and harmony, I labeled them reconciliations.
Any species that combines close bonds with a potential for conflict needs such conciliatory mechanisms. Thinking how much faster marriages would break up if people had no way of compensating for hurting each other, I set out to investigate such mechanisms in several primates, including bonobos. Although I expected to see peacemaking in these apes, too, I was little prepared for the form it would take.
For my study, which began in 1983, I chose the San Diego Zoo. At the time, it housed the world's largest captive bonobo colony--10 members divided into three groups. I spent entire days in front of the enclosure with a video camera, which was switched on at feeding time. As soon as a caretaker approached the enclosure with food, the males would develop erections. Even before the food was thrown into the area, the bonobos would be inviting each other for sex: males would invite females, and females would invite males and other females.
Sex, it turned out, is the key to the social life of the bonobo. The first suggestion that the sexual behavior of bonobos is different had come from observations at European zoos. Wrapping their findings in Latin, primatologists Eduard Tratz and Heinz Heck reported in 1954 that the chimpanzees at Hellabrun mated more canum (like dogs) and bonobos more hominum (like people). In those days, face-to- face copulation was considered uniquely human, a cultural innovation that needed to be taught to preliterate people (hence the term "missionary position"). These early studies, written in German, were ignored by the international scientific establishment. The bonobo's humanlike sexuality needed to be rediscovered in the 1970s before it became accepted as characteristic of the species.
Bonobos become sexually aroused remarkably easily, and they express this excitement in a variety of mounting positions and genital contacts. Although chimpanzees virtually never adopt face-to-face positions, bonobos do so in one out of three copulations in the wild. Furthermore, the frontal orientation of the bonobo vulva and clitoris strongly suggest that the female genitalia are adapted for this position.
Another similarity with humans is increased female sexual receptivity. The tumescent phase of the female's genitals, resulting in a pink swelling that signals willingness to mate, covers a much longer part of estrus in bonobos than in chimpanzees. Instead of a few days out of her cycle, the female bonobo is almost continuously sexually attractive and active.
Perhaps the bonobo's most typical sexual pattern, undocumented in any other primate, is genito-genital rubbing (or GG rubbing) between adult females. One female facing another clings with arms and legs to a partner that, standing on both hands and feet, lifts her off the ground. The two females then rub their genital swellings laterally together, emitting grins and squeals that probably reflect orgasmic experiences. (Laboratory experiments on stump- tailed macaques have demonstrated that women are not the only female primates capable of physiological orgasm.)
Male bonobos, too, may engage in pseudocopulation but generally perform a variation. Standing back to back, one male briefly rubs his scrotum against the buttocks of another. They also practice so-called penis-fencing, in which two males hang face to face from a branch while rubbing their erect penises together.
The diversity of erotic contacts in bonobos includes sporadic oral sex, massage of another individual's genitals and intense tongue-kissing. Lest this leave the impression of a pathologically oversexed species, I must add, based on hundreds of hours of watching bonobos, that their sexual activity is rather casual and relaxed. It appears to be a completely natural part of their group life. Like people, bonobos engage in sex only occasionally, not continuously. Furthermore, with the average copulation lasting 13 seconds, sexual contact in bonobos is rather quick by human standards."

"Just imagine that we had never heard of chimpanzees or baboons and had known bonobos first. We would at present most likely believe that early hominids lived in female- centered societies, in which sex served important social functions and in which warfare was rare or absent. In the end, perhaps the most successful reconstruction of our past will be based not on chimpanzees or even on bonobos but on a three-way comparison of chimpanzees, bonobos and humans. "

and here:
Darwin's last laugh

"I disagree. The opposite approach of anthropodenial — the a priori rejection of continuity between humans and other animals — has led people to systematically underestimate animals2. Well into the last century, comparative psychologists had animals perform arbitrary laboratory tasks unrelated to the problems they face in their natural environments. This theory-free 'behaviourism' never advanced our understanding of cognition to the degree that Darwinism has."

Evolutionary theory predicts cognitive similarities based on the relations between species and their habitats. It also tells us that if closely related species, be they octopus and squid or human and chimpanzee, show similar responses under similar circumstances, the most parsimonious interpretation is that the cognition involved is similar too. Humans and their closest relatives diverged so recently, in evolutionary terms, that it is hardly anthropomorphic to assume that shared ancestry suggests shared cognition."

"Even distantly related species, such as elephants, dolphins, primates and birds, share an evolutionary history that may explain cognitive similarities, much as deep homologies in genetic instruction underlie the eyes and limbs of both flies and rodents. For example, neuroscientists first discovered mirror neurons in macaques, but have since found them in swamp sparrows, suggesting that they occurred in the common ancestor of birds and mammals. These neurons fire both when an animal performs an action and when it sees or hears another perform that action, and are thought to facilitate human imitation and empathy."