primates

"Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and bonobos (P. paniscus) are our closest living relatives, with the human lineage diverging from the Pan lineage only around five to seven Mya, but possibly as early as eight Mya. Chimpanzees and bonobos even share genetic similarities with humans that they do not share with each other. Given their close genetic relationship to humans, both Pan species represent crucial living models for reconstructing our last common ancestor (LCA) and identifying uniquely human features. Comparing the similarities and differences of the two Pan is thus essential for constructing balanced models of human evolution."

"There once was a brainy baboon,Who always breathed down a bassoon,For he said, "It appearsThat in billions of yearsI shall certainly hit on a tune"."

"Evolution is a process that never stops. Baboons who fail to exhibit moral behavior do not survive; they wind up as meat for leopards."

"When I first began working with baboons, my main problem was learning to keep up with them while remaining alert to poisonous snakes, irascible buffalo, aggressive bees, and leg-breaking pig holes. Fortunately, these challenges eased over time, mainly because I was traveling in the company of expert guides—baboons who could spot a predator a mile away and seemed to possess a sixth sense for the proximity of snakes. Abandoning myself to their far superior knowledge, I moved as a humble disciple, learning from masters about being an African anthropoid. Thus I became (or, rather, regained my ancestral right to be) an animal, moving instinctively through a world that felt (because it was) like my ancient home."

"There were 140 baboons in the troop, and I came to know every one as a highly distinctive individual. Each one had a particular gait, which allowed me to know who was who, even from great distances when I couldn't see anyone's face. Every baboon had a characteristic voice and unique things to say with it; each had a face like no other, favorite foods, favorite friends, favorite bad habits."

"The strain of man's bred out Into baboons and monkey."

"Humans have more sympathy. In the chimp you have sympathy between a mother and a child but you seldom find it anywhere else. Sympathy is a very, very human characteristic."

"Studying chimps ‘has helped me to realize, perhaps more than anything else, just how different we are from them’."

"Children, behold the Chimpanzee, He sits on the ancestral tree From which we sprang in ages gone. I'm glad we sprang; had we held on, We might, for aught that I can say, Be horrid chimpanzees today."

"If chimpanzees can experience loneliness and mental anguish, it becomes more wrong to use them for experiments in which they are isolated and anticipate daily pain."

"Common chimpanzee, Pan troglodytes (West and Central Africa)"

"That chimpanzees and humans kill members of neighbouring groups of their own species is...a startling exception to the normal rule for animals. Add our close genetic relationship to these apes and we face the possibility that intergroup aggression in our two species has a common origin. This idea of a common origin is made more haunting by the clues that suggest modern chimpanzees are...surprisingly excellent models of our direct ancestors. It suggests that chimpanzee-like violence preceded and paved the way for human war, making modern humans the dazed survivors of a continuous, 5-million-year habit of lethal aggression."

"Like Yanomamö villages, chimpanzee communities are kinship groups based on aggregates of closely related males and unrelated females who have emigrated from other kinship groups... Like Yanomamö war, chimpanzee lethal raiding takes place when a subgroup of males...deliberately invades the recognised territory of a neighbouring community... Do they suggest to us that chimpanzee violence is linked to human war? Clearly they do. The appetite for engagement, the excited assembly of a war party, the stealthy raid, the discovery of an enemy and the quick estimation of odds, the gang-kill, and the escape are the common elements that make intercommunity violence possible for both."

"Chimpanzees...live in societies that are xenophobic, wandering in small parties, fighting with neighbours... In chimpanzee society, patriarchy rules. Communities persist through a line of father-son relationships. Males are the inheritors of territory. Males conduct the raids and the killing. Males are dominant. Males gain the spoils... Territorial gains, like territorial losses, have different impacts on males and females. For a male-bonded chimpanzee community, conquered lands can include not only a larger foraging area, but also new females who may simply continue to forage in the same area of forest as before the boundaries changed, only now with a different set of defenders. So males of an expanding community can gain females, which means that male chimpanzees should want to expand their territory to the largest area they can defend."

"Just 6 million years ago, a single female ape had two daughters. One became the ancestor of all chimpanzees, the other is our own grandmother."

"The Cerebral Cortex is the surface region of the brain that is most strongly linked to intelligence. A human’s cerebral cortex, if flattened, would cover four pages of typing paper; a chimpanzee’s would cover only one page; and a rat’s would cover a postage stamp."

"Bonobo, Pan paniscus (forests of the Democratic Republic of the Congo)."

"The human brain is composed almost exclusively of the [cerebral] cortex. The brain of a chimpanzee, for example, also has a cortex, but in far smaller proportions. The cortex allows us to think, to remember, to imagine. Essentially, we are human beings by virtue of our cortex."

"[S]ome of the most fundamental ideas that stood at the basis of the 1960s' influential theories have since been all but reversed by the scientific community. To begin with, field study—pioneered by Jane Goodall at Gombe, in Tanzania, from the mid-1960s, and joined by other researchers since—for the first time provided a close, sustained, and reliable scientific observation on the chimpanzees' way of life in their natural habitat. The findings have been revolutionary. For instance, it has been revealed that rather than being vegetarian, chimpanzees...crave meat as a prime food. Primarily, although not exclusively, males, acting in co-operation, isolate, hunt, and avidly eat other animals, mostly monkeys and small mammals, but also straying, weak or infant chimpanzees... [T]he chimpanzees' group—several dozen strong and consisting of males and females with their infants—has been found to be highly territorial. The males patrol the boundaries of the group's territory and fiercely attack any intruder, including foreign chimpanzees (but not lone females coming to join the group). They also aggressively raid foreign territories."

"Goodall documented a conflict between two groups that lasted several years. The males of one of the groups invaded and gradually, one by one, isolated and killed first the males and then the other members of the other group, finally annexing its territory. Instances of murderous aggression, even by females, especially against infants that were not their own, have also been observed within the group. Finally, on occasion, chimpanzees would threaten with, beat with and throw sticks and stones. From being humans' idyllic antithesis in the 1960s' culture, the friendly, playfully naughty, and intelligent, but also jealous, quarrelsome, killing, and even warring, chimpanzees now increasingly mirror what we have commonly thought about ourselves."

"I cannot conceive of chimpanzees developing emotions, one for the other, comparable in any way to the tenderness, the protectiveness, tolerance, and spiritual exhilaration that are the hallmarks of human love in its truest and deepest sense."

"The strain of man's bred out Into baboons and monkey."

"Orangutans are skepticalOf changes in their cages,And the zookeeper is very fond of rum."

"Oh how the VacancyLaughed at them rushing by."Turn again, flesh and brain,Only yourselves again!How far above the apeDiffering in each shape,You with your regularMeaningless circles are!""

"Everywhere men have unlocked the prisoners within, and from under the disguising skins the apes have leapt joyfully out."

"The monkey sat on a pile of stoneAnd he stared at the broken bone in his handStrains of a Viennese quartet rang out across the landThe monster looked up at the starsAnd he thought to himselfMemory is a strangerHistory is for foolsAnd he cleaned his hands in a pool of holy writingTurned his back on the garden and set out for the nearest town""

"Al draagt een aap een gouden ring, het is en blijft een lelijk ding."

"القرد فى عين امه غزال"

"ياواخد القرد علي ماله يروح المال و يفضل القرد علي حاله"

"Ce n'est pas aux vieux singes qu'on apprend à faire des grimaces."

"Jwe ak makak, men pa manyen ke-l."

"बंदर क्या जाने अदरक का स्वाद ।"

"Margur verður af aurum api."

"Kalo di hutan tak ada singa, beruk rabun bisa menjadi raja."

"ಮಂಗನ ಪಾರುಪತ್ಯ ಮರದ ಟೊಂಗೆ ಮೇಲೆ"

"Em rio que tem piranha, macaco bebe água de canudinho."

"Siku ya kufa nyani miti yote huteleza."

"We were born of risen apes, not fallen angels, and the apes were armed killers besides. And so what shall we wonder at? Our murders and massacres and missiles, and our irreconcilable regiments? Or our treaties whatever they may be worth; our symphonies however seldom they may be played; our peaceful acres, however frequently they may be converted to battlefields; our dreams however rarely they may be accomplished. The miracle of man is not how far he has sunk but how magnificently he has risen. We are known among the stars by our poems, not our corpses."

"If you start putting very large numbers of human brain cells into primates, suddenly you might transform primates into something that has some of the capacities that we regard as distinctively human – speech or other ways of being able to manipulate or relate to a human. These possibilities, at the moment, are largely being explored in fiction but we need to start thinking about them now."

"I seem to see only the strivings of an ape reft of his tail, and grown rusty at climbing, who has reeled blunderingly from mystery to mystery, with pathetic makeshifts, not understanding anything, greedy in all desires, and always honeycombed with poltroonery. So in a secret place his youth was put away in exchange for a prize that was hardly worth the having; and the fine geas which his mother laid upon him was exchanged for the common geas of what seems expected."

"The word 'apes' usually means chimpanzees, gorillas, orang utans, gibbons, and simangs. We admit that we are like apes, but we seldom realise that we are apes. Our common ancestor with the chimpanzees and gorillas is much more recent than their common ancestor with the Asian apes – the gibbons and orangutans. There is no natural category that includes chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans but excludes humans."

"The least I can do is speak out for the hundreds of chimpanzees who, right now, sit hunched, miserable and without hope, staring out with dead eyes from their metal prisons. They cannot speak for themselves."

"I do not want to discuss evolution in such depth, however, only touch on it from my own perspective: from the moment when I stood on the Serengeti plains holding the fossilized bones of ancient creatures in my hands to the moment when, staring into the eyes of a chimpanzee, I saw a thinking, reasoning personality looking back. You may not believe in evolution, and that is all right. How we humans came to be the way we are is far less important than how we should act now to get out of the mess we have made for ourselves."

"You can imagine my dismay when I got to Cambridge and found that I had done everything wrong. I shouldn't have named the chimps; I should have given them numbers. I couldn't talk about their personalities, their minds or their feelings because that was unique to us."

"Chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutan shave been living for hundreds of thousands of years in their forest, living fantastic lives, never overpopulating, never destroying the forest. I would say that they have been in a way more successful than us as far as being in harmony with the environment."

"At the moment, money from Gombe tourism goes into one pot for Tanzania National Parks and it has to pay for the whole infrastructure of everything. But through our TACARE [community development] programme, we’ve benefited local people hugely. The thing is about tourism and research is that they can both focus attention on the place and help to preserve it. It’s tourism involvement with the mountain gorillas that saved them. During the genocide in Rwanda in the 1990s, people on both sides were being told, “Don’t touch the gorillas”, as it was the second biggest foreign exchange earner after tea in the country. So both sides hoped to win and continue exploiting gorillas. So the government can see the value of tourism, but the danger is they over-exploit it. They say, “We’re getting all this money for [gorilla-tracking groups of] six people, now we’ll let it be 12”, and they get more money for tours, so they make it 20. That’s the danger; that they end up killing what people have come to see."

"A man has no reason to be ashamed of having an ape for his grandfather. If there was an ancestor whom I should feel shame in recalling it would rather be a man — a man of restless and versatile intellect — who not content with an equivocal success in his own sphere of activity, plunges into scientific questions with which he has no real acquaintance, only to obscure them with aimless rhetoric, and distract the attention of his hearers from the real point at issue by eloquent digressions and skilled appeals to religious prejudice."

"There is thus a certain plausibility to Nietzsche's doctrine, though it is dynamite. He maintains in effect that the gulf separating Plato from the average man is greater than the cleft between the average man and a chimpanzee."

"Actually, the gap between say Plato or Nietzsche and the average human is greater than the gap between that chimpanzee and the average human."

"People may choose to ignore their animal heritage by interpreting their behavior as divinely inspired, socially purposeful, or even self-serving, all of which they attribute to being human, but they masticate, fornicate, and procreate, much as chimps and apes do, so they should have little cause to get upset if they learn that they act like other primates when they politically agitate, debate, abdicate, placate, and administrate, too."