Primatologists

"To endow animals with human emotions has long been a scientific taboo. But if we do not, we risk missing something fundamental, about both animals and us."

"I've argued that many of what philosophers call moral sentiments can be seen in other species. In chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans and humans, you see examples of sympathy, empathy, reciprocity, a willingness to follow social rules. Dogs are a good example of a species that have and obey social rules; that's why we like them so much, even though they're large carnivores."

"The possibility that empathy resides in parts of the brain so ancient that we share them with rats should give pause to anyone comparing politicians with those poor, underestimated creatures."

"In 1879, American economist Francis Walker tried to explain why members of his profession were in such "bad odor amongst real people". He blamed it on their inability to understand why human behavior fails to comply with economic theory. We do not always act the way economists think we should, mainly because we're both less selfish and less rational than economists think we are. Economists are being indoctrinated into a cardboard version of human nature, which they hold true to such a degree that their own behavior has begun to resemble it. Psychological tests have shown that economics majors are more egoistic than the average college student. Exposure in class after class to the capitalist self-interest model apparently kills off whatever prosocial tendencies these students have to begin with. They give up trusting others, and conversely others give up trusting them. Hence the bad odor."

"Don’t believe anyone who says that since nature is based on a struggle for life, we need to live like this as well. Many animals survive not by eliminating each other or by keeping everything for themselves, but by cooperating and sharing. This applies most definitely to pack hunters, such as wolves or killer whales, but also our closest relatives, the primates. In a study in Taï National Park, in Ivory Coast, chimpanzees took care of group mates wounded by leopards, licking their blood, carefully removing dirt, and waving away flies that came near the wounds. They protected injured companions, and slowed down during travel in order to accommodate them. All of this makes perfect sense given that chimpanzees live in groups for a reason, the same way wolves and humans are group animals for a reason. If man is wolf to man, he is so in every sense, not just the negative one. We would not be where we are today had our ancestors been socially aloof. What we need is a complete overhaul of assumptions about human nature. Too many economists and politicians model human society on the perpetual struggle they believe exists in nature, but which is a mere projection. Like magicians, they first throw their ideological prejudices into the hat of nature, then pull them out by their very ears to show how much nature agrees with them. It’s a trick for which we have fallen for too long. Obviously, competition is part of the picture, but humans can’t live by competition alone."

"I first saw them in 1978. At the time, I knew a lot about chimps, because I had been studying them. I saw the bonobos at a zoo in Holland, and I thought immediately, they're totally different. The sense you get looking them in the eyes is that they're more sensitive, more sensual, not necessarily more intelligent, but there's a high emotional awareness, so to speak, of each other and also of people who look at them."

"At the time, I was interested in reconciliation after fights, and I wanted to know how bonobos did it compared to chimpanzees. Very soon I discovered that they were much more sexual in everything they did, and that interested me — not so much for the sex part, even though that became a very hot topic, the peacemaking-through-sex thing — but much more how they have such a peaceful society, because they are much less violent than chimpanzees."

"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. Indeed, among hunter-gatherers, peace is common 90 percent of the time, and war takes place only a small part of the time. 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."

"It is true that the chimpanzee is dominance-oriented, violent, territorial. But it's also cooperative in many ways, and so that side is sometimes forgotten. The bonobo is sensual, sensitive, sexual, a peacemaker, but also can have a nasty side, and that's sometimes forgotten. So both species are sort of the ends of the spectrum, and we fall somewhere in between. Clearly, we have both of these sides in us, and that's why I sometimes call us "the bipolar apes.""

"I would say there are people in this world who like hierarchies, they like to keep people in their place, they like law enforcement, and they probably have a lot in common, let's say, with the chimpanzee. And then you have other people in this world who root for the underdog, they give to the poor, they feel the need to be good, and they maybe have more of this kinder bonobo side to them. Our societies are constructed around the interface between those two, so we need both actually."

"Imagine that we didn't know the chimpanzee, that all we knew were those bonobos who have sex all the time and are peaceful and female-dominated and that people would say that this is our only close relative. I think we would have totally different theories about ourselves and our background. But, of course, it didn't happen that way."

"I think if we study the primates, we notice that a lot of these things that we value in ourselves, such as human morality, have a connection with primate behavior. This completely changes the perspective, if you start thinking that actually we tap into our biological resources to become moral beings. That gives a completely different view of ourselves than this nasty selfish-gene type view that has been promoted for the last 25 years."

"I think we can defend the view that there are two different sorts of moral gap, an ‘affection gap’ and a ‘performance gap’. The affection gap is that non-human animals do not have what Duns Scotus calls ‘the affection for justice’, which is a pull towards what is good in itself, regardless of any relation to us. The performance gap is that we do not find in ourselves the innate capacity to live consistently by the affection for justice by merely human devices. ... De Waal says that the doctrine of original sin has been refuted and that we are not sinfully self-centered but ‘we are driven to empathize with others in an automated, often unconditional fashion. We genuinely care about others, wanting to see them happy and healthy regardless of what immediate good this may do for us.’ However, he agrees that we do not find in non-human animals morality itself, though we do find kin selection, so-called ‘reciprocal altruism’, and social control. This admits the affection gap. He also agrees that human beings, despite formal protestations to the contrary and despite our innate goodness, put self and its kin first, then the ingroup, and the idea of being moral towards individuals from other groups is very recent and very fragile. As far as I can see, this is the performance gap."

"When we think about the diet of early humans, we're often drawn to thinking about meat, but plant foods were more important than the archaeological record gives credit for. The food that could be relied on wherever you were was the plant food."

"I had never seen Gundul threaten or assault a woman, although he frequently charged male assistants. The cook was screaming hysterically. I thought, 'He's trying to kill her.' I began to realize that Gundul did not intend to harm the cook, but had something else in mind. The cook stopped struggling. 'It's all right,' she murmured. She lay back in my arms, with Gundul on top of her. Gundul was very calm and deliberate. He raped the cook. As he moved rhythmically back and forth, his eyes rolled upward to the heavens. I was in shock. Gundul let the cook go, stood up, and soundlessly, moved off the feeding platform into the trees. It was over just like that."

"... visitor to take the dugout back to Camp Leakey for help. My repeated blows had no effect on Gundul; but neither did he fight back very aggressively. I began to realize that Gundul did not intend to harm the cook, but had something else in mind. The cook stopped struggling. "It's all right," she murmured. She lay back in my arms, with Gundul on top of her. Gundul was very calm and deliberate. He raped the cook. As he moved rhythmically back and forth, his eyes rolled upward to the heavens. I was in shock. I felt as though this were happening to other people somewhere else, and I was watching from a distance. I have no idea how much time passed."

"It was their individuality combined with the shyness of their behavior that remained the most captivating impression of this first encounter with the greatest of the great apes. I left Kabara with reluctance, but with never a doubt that I would, somehow, return to learn more about the gorillas of the misted mountains."

"I have no friends. The more you learn about the dignity of the gorilla, the more you want to avoid people."

"We stripped him [a poacher] and spread eagled him outside my cabin and lashed the holy blue sweat out of him with nettle stalks and leaves, concentrating on the places where it might hurt a mite. Wow, I never knew such little fellows had such big things. ... I then went through the ordinary 'sumu,' black magic routine of Mace, ether, needles and masks, and ended with sleeping pills. ... That is called 'conservation'—not talk."

"It is only a matter for the President to give the order—KILL—the prisons are already overcrowded and this is the only way we are going to be able to protect the remaining gorillas."

"When you realize the value of all life, you learn to dwell less on what is past and concentrate more on the preservation of the future."

"It’s as if Mother Teresa had just died. But the Mother Teresas of the world don’t get bludgeoned to death in their bedrooms. Dian had some real enemies, and at least one mortal enemy. But you won’t hear this from the [Rwandan] government now."

"Dian Fossey was to gorillas what Greenpeace is to whales. She was prepared to ignore the niceties of diplomatic approaches and just get in there and do the job. She did what she considered right. But she was in many ways like the gorillas. If you’re easily put off by bluff charges, screaming and shouting, you’ll probably think gorillas are monsters, and you won’t go near them. If you’re prepared to sidestep the temper and get to know the person, you’d find that Dian, like the gorillas, was a gentle, loving person."

"When I got to Rwanda, Dian was extremely warm, welcoming and encouraging. She was also a bit scary, exuding a determined, uncompromising, take-no-prisoners attitude towards poachers, cattle in the Park illegally (of which there were many at that time), and any ‘students’ who didn’t dedicate themselves 100% to the good of Karisoke. Basically, she appeared to fear nothing and was not going to take any nonsense from anyone. At the same time, she seemed like a very emotional person, almost too emotional."

"She had a perfectly colonial attitude toward the Africans. On Christmas she'd give the most extravagant presents to them; other times she'd humiliate them, spit on the ground in front of them—once I even saw her spit on one of the workers—break into their cabin and accuse them of stealing and dock their pay. Two researchers left Karisoke because of the way she treated the Africans. ... They were loyal to her, but they had to stay because there are few paid jobs in the area and there is a certain cachet to being a tracker. The men never knew when she was going to start yelling at them. When she left camp it was like a cloud had risen, and it got worse over the years."

"She would torture them [poachers]. She would whip their balls with stinging nettles, spit on them, kick them, put on masks and curse them, stuff sleeping pills down their throats. She said she hated doing it, and respected the poachers for being able to live in the forest, but she got into it and liked to do it and felt guilty that she did. She hated them so much. She reduced them to quivering, quaking packages of fear, little guys in rags rolling on the ground and foaming at the mouth."

"I think by the end she was doing more harm than good. Dian went out to the gorillas because she loved them and she loved the bush and being on her own, but she ended up with more than she bargained for. She wasn't planning on having to organize and work with and fight with people. She was no good as a scientific mentor, but she couldn't hand over control. She couldn't take the backseat. Her alternative—to leave and die somewhere an invalid—was never something she would have considered. She always fantasized about a final confrontation. She viewed herself as a warrior fighting this enemy who was out to get her. It was a perfect ending. She got what she wanted. It was exactly how she would have ended the script."

"It's probably true that Dian chose wrongly when she decided to take the law into her own hands, to try to fight the poachers by herself. And yet she felt this way was the only way to try to put right the terrible wrongs that she saw being done. But who are we to blame her? I don't know how I would react if there were poachers threatening the chimps at Gombe."

"I warned her. Everybody who was fond of her did. But she didn't want to listen to things like that. She was a law unto herself."

"She was caught up in circumstances beyond her control, disasters that upset her mind in the early stages and soured her later years. Others would have quit. She was never physically strong, but she had guts and willpower and an urgent desire to study the gorillas, and that was what kept her up there."

"I only knew the person I had to deal with for eight years, and this was a sad person. She was riding on some kind of dedication she had once had. Why did she hardly ever go out to the gorillas if they were her life-motivating force? She criticized others of 'me-itis,' yet she kept threatening to burn the station down and all the long-term records. She was willing to take down everything with her—Karisoke, the gorillas. When I did a census that indicated the gorilla population was growing quite nicely, she tried to cut off my funding; she wanted them to be dying. Dian could have had all the accolades in the world for what she did during the first six years. It would have been natural for others to build on her work, but she didn't have the self-confidence or the character for that to happen. So many people came over here inspired by Dian Fossey, prepared to give her the benefit of the doubt. No one wanted to fight her. No one wanted to take over the place. She invented so many plots and enemies. She kept talking about how nobody could take it up there, how they all got 'bushy,' but in the end she was the only one who went bonkers. She didn't get killed because she was saving the gorillas. She got killed because she was behaving like Dian Fossey."

"Under Dian's direction of the research center, she would not allow a Rwandan to be in sight of the gorillas - claiming it would make the gorillas more vulnerable to poaching. Given that a gunshot or a trap could be effective without being seen, this didn't make complete sense, and now that Rwandans are fully engaged in their conservation poaching is far, far reduced and the gorilla population is thriving."

"Poachers, cattle herders, park officials, Western conservationists, members of her staff, a couple dozen researchers — the parade of possible suspects extended far back into the past. In pursuit of her singular goal, the protection of the endangered mountain gorilla, Fossey had shot at her enemies, kidnapped their children, whipped them about the genitals, smeared them with ape dung, killed their cattle, burned their property, discredited their work, and sent them to jail."

"Despite the fame of Fossey and the other Trimates, women, and particularly African women, are still underrepresented in science. We are taking numerous initiatives to strengthen our programs for women in science, including establishing a scholarship fund, as well as aiming to have equal representation of women in our livelihoods and food security work that takes place in the communities living near the gorillas. It is wonderful to be able to extend Dian’s legacy in this special way, perhaps not one that she would have expected."

"They [female primates] tolerate other breeding females if food is plentiful, but chase them away when monogamy is the optimal strategy."