The other color, if they hand it to us, they get food, but the neighbor also gets the same piece of food and so the one who does the exchanging, for that chimp it doesn't make any difference, he will always get some food for what he does with us, but the only difference is one color feeds only himself, the other color feeds the two of them. What did we find? We found that chimps over time started to prefer the pieces, the color that would feed the two of them. So they did care about the well being of others.
They developed a preference for that and we have done many more experiments since and other people have done experiments since and now the perception is that, yes, chimpanzees do actually care about the well being of others and are not as entirely selfish as people had assumed.
R.K.: Now, you said early in the interview that people who think that humans are better are elitists. Why do you think it is that people feel the need to say that humans are better and different and more unique? All this research is showing that it's really a matter of degree.
F.W.: Yeah. Well that's a very old debate. Darwin of course already said that, something along the lines that however vague the cognitive differences are between humans and apes, or humans and other animals, they are a matter of degree. That's what he said and there has always been these two sides to the issue. It's that one group, mostly biologists, who will say that is continuity and then another group, mostly social scientists who don't work really with animals, saying that there is this huge difference.
Basically, I think all of the evidence of the last thirty, forty years of studies on animal behavior and animal cognition support the view that there is continuity. There are a few areas of difference and we talked about that, like language, and so on. So there are areas of difference and you can concentrate on those, or not if you want to, but overall, by and large, there is a lot of continuity.
R.K.: But that wasn't my question. I am already buying that, that there's continuity. My question is, why do you think people need to think otherwise? Why do people take this elitist approach and need to say that humans are unique and that there is this discontinuity in your terms? What is it about some people that they need to separate themselves from your work?
F.W.: That's a question for the human psychologists so to speak. Why are some people insecure about human species and feel that you need to emphasize how different and how special you are and other people don't feel that need. I always, since I give so many lectures on animal behavior, always feel there are two kinds of people; there are people who feel that they are very close to animals.
Certainly, if you go to give a lecture at a zoo like I often do, the zoo caretakers and the curators and everyone who works at the zoo, feels very close to animals and so that kind of audience basically assumes that we are animals. We are very close to them and we are very similar to them.
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
2
1
1
