Why Study Non-Human Primates?

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Franz Deval is a professor of climate behaviour at Emory University. He has written extensively about concepts like the alpha male, empathy in non-human animals and other really interesting topics. We had a broad conversation, but it fueled by my desire to understand what we can learn from non-human primates. And so we ended up discussing nature and nurture, evolutionary biology, the nature of gender and biological sex. It made me think about human societies in a fresh light.

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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