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" Chimpanzees, typically, kiss and embrace after fights. They first make eye contact from a distance to see the mood of the others. Then they approach and kiss and embrace. "

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" I was too restless as a boy to sit through an entire mass. It was akin to aversion training. I looked at it like a puppet show with a totally predictable story line. The only aspect I really liked was the music. "

Frans de Waal

Boy

Sit

Music

" The enemy of science is not religion. Religion comes in endless shapes and forms... The true enemy is the substitution of thought, reflection, and curiosity with dogma. "

" Dogmatists have one advantage: they are poor listeners. "

" Religions have a strong binding function and a cohesive element. They emphasize the primacy of the community as opposed to the individual, and they also help set one community apart from another that doesn't share their beliefs. "

" We need to separate the process of evolution - which is, indeed, a self-serving process - and the actual motivations of animals. "

" Although elephants are far more distantly related to us than the great apes, they seem to have evolved similar social and cognitive capacities. "

" Chimps cannot tell us anything about peaceful relations, because chimps have only different degrees of hostility between communities. Whereas bonobos do tell us something; they tell us about the possibility of having peaceful relationships. "

" Bonobo studies started in the '70s and came to fruition in the '80s. Then in the '90s, all of a sudden, boom, they ended because of the warfare in the Congo. It was really bad for the bonobo and ironic that people with their warfare were preventing us from studying the hippies of the primate world. "

" Male chimpanzees have an extraordinarily strong drive for dominance. They're constantly jockeying for position. "

" People want to work with somebody who feels shame, who worries about the perceptions of others. Dishonesty is something we don't like in others. "

" I am personally not against keeping animals at zoos, as they serve a huge educational purpose, but treating them well and with respect seems the least we could do, and with 'we' I mean not just zoo staff, but most certainly also the public. "

" War is evitable if conditions are such that the costs of making war are higher than the benefits. "

" If you look at human society, it is very easy, of course, to compare our warfare and territoriality with the chimpanzee. But that's only one side of what we do. We also trade, we intermarry, we allow each other to travel through our territory. There's an enormous amount of cooperation. "

" Octopuses have hundreds of suckers, each one equipped with its own ganglion with thousands of neurons. These 'mini-brains' are interconnected, making for a widely distributed nervous system. That is why a severed octopus arm may crawl on its own and even pick up food. "

" A chimpanzee who is really gearing up for a fight doesn't waste time with gestures but just goes ahead and attacks. "

Frans de Waal

Just

Time

" Future benefits rarely figure in the minds of animals. "

" The term 'alpha female' originated in my field of animal behavior, but has acquired new meaning. It refers to women who are in charge, for example, by flirting and dating on their own terms. It is also used maliciously for a loud-mouthed, controlling woman who has no patience with deviating opinions. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" When humans behave murderously, such as inflicting senseless slaughter of innocents in warfare, we like to blame it on some dark, 'animalistic' instinct. "

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Some

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" Chimpanzees have very strong preferences and aversions that are completely personality-linked. The people who are unsuccessful in working with chimpanzees are those who take this personally. "

" The intuitive connection children feel with animals can be a tremendous source of joy. The unconditional love received from pets, and the lack of artifice in the relationship, contrast sharply with the much trickier dealings with members of their own species. "

" Humans have a lot of pro-social tendencies. "

" 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. "

" Very ancient parts of the brain are involved in moral decision making. "

" Our brains have been designed to blur the line between self and other. It is an ancient neural circuitry that marks every mammal, from mouse to elephant. "

" There's a long tradition in Western thought that humans are not shackled by biology, whereas animals are pure instinct machines. "

" There are many reasons for kindness, and religion is just one of them. "

" Scientists are supposed to study animals in a totally objective fashion, similar to the way we inspect a rock or measure the circumference of a tree trunk. Emotions are not to interfere with the assessment. The animal-rights movement capitalizes on this perception, depicting scientists as devoid of compassion. "

" What is the evolutionary value of blushing? It seems not to be to our advantage to do it, to involuntarily reveal our inner emotions. If we're trying to manipulate or lie, actions in furtherance of individual goals as opposed to the goals of others, blushing would not seem to be helpful. And yet everyone blushes, except the psychopath. "