The Cosmopolitan Ape

The next time you mutter under your breath about the big gorilla in the next office, you might want to reconsider. The insult may reflect badly on you. Renowned primatologist Frans de Waal has spent decades studying chimpanzees and bonobos and found that nearly everything we hold in high esteem as “human nature” can be found in great apes.

De Waal runs Living Links Center at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Atlanta. He’s written a series of influential books, including Chimpanzee Politics and Our Inner Ape, which add up to a sustained argument against human exceptionalism. His new book, The Bonobo and the Atheist, takes aim at critics and dissenters—anthropologists, behaviorists, Christian fundamentalists—and at the “strident atheism” of Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. De Waal, a non-believer himself, sees religion as an offshoot of our biological drive to do good.

I recently caught up with de Waal to talk about why humans are not nearly as unique as they think they are. He is an amiable conversationalist with a sly sense of humor. He’s a fast talker, bursting with ideas, displaying the self-assurance of a prominent scientist who’s fought his share of intellectual battles.

Most people assume that humans are fundamentally different from the rest of the animal world. What do you think?

Many people believe that. But to biologists we are animals. It’s hard to believe we are fundamentally different because there is no part of the human brain that is not present in a monkey’s brain. Our brains are bigger and we certainly have a more powerful computer than any other animal, but the computer is not fundamentally different.

There is no part of the human brain that is not present in a monkey’s brain.

So there’s no fundamental divide between humans and chimpanzees?

No. If you were to ask what the big difference is, I would say it’s probably language. But like all capacities, once you break them down into pieces, you are going to find some of these parts in other species.

Why are so many people wedded to the idea that humans are special?

We’re raised with those ideas. It’s an old Christian idea that humans have souls and animals don’t. I sometimes think it’s because our religions arose in a desert environment in which there were no primates, so you have people who lived with camels, goats, snakes, and scorpions. Of course, you from it? You would never call a giraffe disgusting, but she was disgusted by chimpanzees and orangutans because people had no concept that there could be animals so similar to us in every possible way. We come from a religion that’s not used to that kind of comparison.