Mama's Last Hug: Animal Emotions and What They Tell Us about Ourselves

by Frans de Waal

We dressed up in skirts and wigs and raised our voices to see what kind of reaction we’d get. We walked in chatting and pointing at the chimps as if we were unexpected female visitors. They barely looked up. No erect penises, no confusion, except that they pulled at our skirts. A few minutes later one of the secretaries peeked around the corner, having seen two strange ladies walk by and thinking they were lost. With her, the chimps immediately showed the reaction we had been hoping for. We concluded that it is easier to fool people than chimps.

The chimps knew the men were't female :-)

In the third century, Tertullian of Carthage, an early Christian theologian, had a most unusual vision of heaven. While hell was a place of torture, heaven was a balcony from which the saved ones could watch hell, thus enjoying the spectacle of doomed souls frying in the fire. What an odd idea! For many of us, it’s almost harder to watch the suffering of others than to suffer ourselves. Tertullian’s balcony strikes me as about as unpleasant as hell itself.

This kind of test is not just about altruism, which can come about in various ways, but about prosocial tendencies, defined as the intention to make life better for others. One of my team members, Vicky Horner, explored prosocial versus selfish choices in chimpanzees under controlled conditions.

Do I hear an echo of Ortega y Gasset’s claim that a chimp wakes up every morning with no idea who or what he is? I’m baffled, because for most animals, today’s behavior is a direct continuation of yesterday’s and predicts tomorrow’s. Imagine having to start over every day figuring out their hierarchy and social network! In reality, each individual member of an animal society has an enduring role. Like us, animals know exactly who they are and where they fit in. Their friendships often last a lifetime. In addition, status displays are much more than a way to get the upper hand. Sometimes they relate to recent history, such as the triumph ceremony of geese, which typically follows a victory, such as a gander chasing off a rival. Doesn’t this ceremony suggest the gander is proud, as it does with humans?

Notice the different language applied to humans and animals, though. We’ve already seen this with pride, the word used for humans, versus dominance in other species. Similarly, a person who gets into trouble with others or loses a contest is said to be ashamed, whereas a chimp under the same circumstances is merely submissive or acting like a subordinate. We prefer functional terms for animals, whereas for ourselves we focus on the feelings behind behavior. We are reluctant to imply that animals may have the same feelings or any feelings at all. But obviously emotions must be involved, and why would they be different? If shame were truly a uniquely human emotion without evolutionary antecedents, then shouldn’t humans express it quite differently from animals? Why must it look exactly like the behavior that biologists would classify as submissive? And not only biologists: Daniel Fessler, an American anthropologist who specializes in human shame, compares its universal shrinking appearance to that of a subordinate facing an angry dominant. Shame reflects awareness that one has either upset others or made a fool of oneself, so that mollification and explanation are in order. Its hierarchical template is obvious.26

The only ones who have addressed our species’s longing for power with frankness have been philosophers. Niccolò Machiavelli comes to mind first; Thomas Hobbes postulated an insuppressible power drive, and Friedrich Nietzsche spoke of humanity’s “will to power.” As a student, realizing that my biology books were of little help explaining chimpanzee behavior, I picked up a copy of Machiavelli’s The Prince. It offered an insightful, unadorned account of human behavior based on real-life observations of the Borgias, the Medici, and the popes. The book put me in the right frame of mind to write about ape politics at the zoo. To this day, however, people hold their noses while discussing the Florentine philosopher, whom they associate with devious and unscrupulous politics. We are better than that, they seem to be saying, ignoring all evidence to the contrary.

Naturally, bonobos have become popular among feminists, who have honored them in book dedications, such as Alice Walker thanking Life for their existence. Whereas chimpanzees resolve sexual issues with power, bonobos resolve power issues with sex. Moreover, they have sex in all possible combinations, including members of the same sex. Scientists and journalists have pushed back, though, feeling that the bonobo is just too good to be true. Could this make-love-not-war species be a “politically correct” concoction, a made-up ape to satisfy the liberal left? One journalist traveled all the way to the Democratic Republic of the Congo in an attempt to prove that bonobos aren’t nearly as pacific as they have been made out to be. All he came back with, however, was the story of a bonobo chasing a duiker. The little antelope escaped safely, but the journalist felt the need to treat his readers to a ghastly account of the way the ape might have killed and devoured it. None of this had much to do with the issue at hand, however, because predation is not aggression. Predation is driven by hunger, not competition.

The most powerful woman of our era, Angela Merkel of Germany, doesn’t even like to draw attention to her gender, dressing as neutrally as possible. Merkel is a skilled and shrewd politician who is unimpressed by men. When Vladimir Putin received her at his Russian dacha in 2007, he introduced his large pet Labrador to her, knowing full well that Merkel was scared of dogs. In the end, his tactic failed, because she drew a distinction between Putin and his dog, noting to journalists, “I understand why he has to do this—to prove he’s a man. He’s afraid of his own weakness.”22 Putin’s tactic showed how men always seek the upper hand through intimidation.