BBC: Chimpanzees show empathy and altruism just like humans

common chimpanzee and bonobo/Chandres William H. Calvin, CC

The BBC has also thought that chimpanzees were entering the Stone Age.

And now:

Eminent anthropologist Frans de Waal explains that politicians have a lot to learn from how chimpanzees show empathy. “How chimpanzees reveal the roots of human behaviour” at BBC

Reality: Chimpanzees don’t seek humans out the way dogs do. In many ways, dogs are more like humans than chimpanzees are and better able to communicate with us emotionally. Dogs don’t seek out chimpanzees, come to think of it, though recently, some researchers needed to convince themselves that something like that was happening between monkeys and wolves. (Uh, no.)

Physical resemblance is apparently not all it’s cracked up to be. Serious study might be worthwhile.

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See also: A top anthropology finding of year show humans cognitively closer to dogs than chimps

Anthropologist does not see chimpanzees as fuzzy humans If a well-to-do idler wants to pretend that his spaniel requires psychoanalysis, life’s rotten for that individual dog. But dogs are hardly going extinct. The fact that chimpanzees are an endangered species means that it’s important to understand them as animals who need a specific habitat, not as pre-humans entering the Stone Age.

Intelligence tests unfair to apes?

and

Are apes entering the Stone Age?

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