What Really Puts Humans Apart From Non-Human Primates?

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What really puts humans apart is not where they fall on that scale from niceness to nastiness. That's very interesting because sometimes people compare these different primate species by sort of which would tend to be more peaceable than others. But the same thing you see in chimpanzees and bonobos. So bonobos are generally nicer than chimps, less violent. Actually, we don't know of one bonobo killing another bonobo. And we know plenty of examples of that in chimpanzees, both in the field and in captivity. It's not as wide maybe, but they have that same spectrum that they can be extremely aggressive under certain circumstances. I would not simplify these things. I can

Frans de Waal is a Dutch-American primatologist and the Charles Howard Candler Professor of Primate Behavior in the Department of Psychology at Emory University. He is the author of, among other books, Chimpanzee Politics: Power and Sex Among Apes and Different: Gender Through the Eyes of a Primatologist.

In this week’s conversation, Yascha Mounk and Frans de Waal discuss how primate empathy forms the basis for human morality; the precedent for diversity in human gender and gender roles that exists in non-human primates; and why, despite attempts to separate human behavior from human biology, you can’t have one without the other.

This transcript has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.

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