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" 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. "

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" 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. "

Frans de Waal

Lie

Trying

Value

" Following rules is, of course, the reason the dog is man's best friend is because the dog follows rules, and they actually do experiments on that, is that how well certain breeds of dogs follow rules, and how much they internalize them. And so many hierarchical animals, obviously they follow rules. "

" The role of inequity in society is grossly underestimated. Inequity is not good for your health, basically. "

" I have often noticed how primate groups in their entirety enter a similar mood. All of a sudden, all of them are playful, hopping around. Or all of them are grumpy. Or all of them are sleepy and settle down. In such cases, the mood contagion serves the function of synchronizing activities. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" The thinking is that we started evolving language not by speaking but by gesturing. "

" 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. "

" Female bonobos form a strong sisterhood. They rule through female solidarity. "

" Religion may have become a codification of morality, and it may fortify it, but it's not the origin of it. "

" Exclusive homosexuality is not very common in nature. "

" I was born in Den Bosch, where the painter Hieronymus Bosch named himself after. And so I've always been very fond of this painter who lived and worked in the 15th century. "

" The more self-aware an animal is, the more empathetic it tends to be. "

Frans de Waal

Tends

Empathetic

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

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

" 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. "

" Many economists are great believers in the idea that everything in nature is competitive and that we should set up a society which is competitive to reflect that. Anyone who cannot keep up, well, too bad. "

" 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. "

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

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

" If one bird foraging in a flock on the ground suddenly takes off, all other birds will take off immediately after, before they even know what's going on. The one who stays behind may be prey. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

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

" I think the sense of fairness in humans is very strongly developed, and that's why we react so strongly to all the bonuses received by Wall Street executives. We want to know why they deserve these benefits. "

" The sturdiest pillars of human morality are compassion and a sense of justice. "

" Darwin wasn't just provocative in saying that we descend from the apes - he didn't go far enough. We are apes in every way, from our long arms and tailless bodies to our habits and temperament. "

" 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. "

" Closeness to animals creates the desire to understand them, and not just a little piece of them, but the whole animal. It makes us wonder what goes on in their heads even though we fully realize that the answer can only be approximated. "