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" 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. "
Frans de Waal
Born
Where
I Was Born
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" The primate laugh is given in playful contexts, and as such has a strong similarity to the human laugh. "
Frans de Waal
Playful
Human
Laugh
" One thing bothered me as a student. In the 1960s, human behavior was totally off limits for the biologist. There was animal behavior, then there was a long time nothing, after which came human behavior as a totally separate category best left to a different group of scientists. "
Frans de Waal
Best
Me
Long
" 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. "
Frans de Waal
Will
Bird
Know
" 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
Food
Luxury
Animals
" The thinking is that we started evolving language not by speaking but by gesturing. "
Frans de Waal
Thinking
Language
Started
" Very long ago our ancestors had moral systems. Our current institutions are only a couple of thousand years old, which is really not old in the eyes of a biologist. "
Frans de Waal
Long
Eyes
Ancestors
" 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
She
Church
Choice
" 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. "
Frans de Waal
Food
Octopus
Own
" 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. "
Frans de Waal
Work
Shame
People
" There are beautiful examples of art done by chimpanzees in human care. "
Frans de Waal
Done
Human
Art
" 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. "
Frans de Waal
Religion
Reflection
Science
" I'm personally a nonbeliever, so I'm struggling with if we really need religion. "
Frans de Waal
Personally
Religion
Really
" 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. "
Frans de Waal
Mood
Distance
See
" 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. "
Frans de Waal
Animals
Realize
Wonder
" Very ancient parts of the brain are involved in moral decision making. "
Frans de Waal
Involved
Decision
Brain
" 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. "
Frans de Waal
Easy
Human
Travel
" We need to separate the process of evolution - which is, indeed, a self-serving process - and the actual motivations of animals. "
Frans de Waal
Need
Animals
Process
" There's a long tradition in Western thought that humans are not shackled by biology, whereas animals are pure instinct machines. "
Frans de Waal
Tradition
Pure
Animals
" It is well known that apes in the wild offer spontaneous assistance to each other, defending against leopards, say, or consoling distressed companions with tender embraces. "
Frans de Waal
Well
Wild
Spontaneous
" 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. "
Frans de Waal
Purpose
Animals
I Am
" Understanding the need for religion is a far superior goal to bashing it. "
Frans de Waal
Goal
Need
Religion
" Religion may have become a codification of morality, and it may fortify it, but it's not the origin of it. "
Frans de Waal
Become
Morality
Origin
" 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
" 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. "
Frans de Waal
How
Playful
Mood
" 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
American
Look
Rest
" Experiments with animals have long been handicapped by our anthropocentric attitude: We often test them in ways that work fine with humans but not so well with other species. "
Frans de Waal
Test
Attitude
Animals
" Humans have a lot of pro-social tendencies. "
Frans de Waal
Humans
Tendencies
Lot
" 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
Animals
Together
Water
" Future benefits rarely figure in the minds of animals. "
Frans de Waal
Minds
Benefits
Animals
" Male chimpanzees have an extraordinarily strong drive for dominance. They're constantly jockeying for position. "
Frans de Waal
Position
Male
Drive