What Can We Learn From the Behavior of Non-Human Primates?

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In bonobos the females are in charge, the females are dominant over the males collectively. And so it's interesting for us as humans if we contemplate our evolutionary history,. people always focus on the chimpanzee and especially anthropologists are very happy with the chimpanzee. They have a very different sort of social organization, a very different kind of behavior. The purpose show is that peaceful intergroup relationships are also possible.

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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