F.W.: Well, I'm not sure that's... that's not necessarily my goal because you know primates, they do also lots of nasty things to each other. They have the entire spectrum that we also have. There are people who are awfully nice and there are people who are awfully nasty.
That same conflict that we see in human society between how you behave under one circumstance and how you behave under another, we see in other primates and I do believe that humans have more extreme versions of all of this. So for example, when humans are violent, we are more violent than any other species. And so we bomb entire nations, we have genocides; that's at a scale that you're really not going to find in other primates, but also when we're nice, we're actually nicer than any other primates.
So for example, we will send money to victims of a tsunami in Japan, or in Thailand which of course primates would not know how to do that even if they wanted to, but I don't think they have a desire to do that kind of thing because they really don't sympathize much with strangers. And so we humans have more extreme forms on both sides, on both the aggressive side and the altruistic side, so to speak.
That same conflict that you see in humans that we sometimes can be extremely nice and that we sometimes can be extremely violent, you're going to find in other primates. So I'm not sure I would hold them up as the example that we should follow, but I do think we can learn a lot about ourselves by looking at other primates.
R.K.: And what are the biggest misconceptions about the differences between humans and primates and other animals that you have come to understand?
F.W.: Well, the big misconceptions are that people assume that we are conscious and animals are not, that we have emotions that animals do not have. I personally think that socially and emotionally we are very similar to other primates. There are areas such as related to language and abstraction and technology where we outshine them, certainly with language.
Language is a very human characteristic, so there are areas where we are quite different, but that's not in the area of let's say social interactions and social emotions for example primates love power. The males at least love power. Very similar, that's why I wrote Chimpanzee Politics, very similar to our politicians. Of course, you know, they will explain on TV that they are not seeking power; they are wanting to improve our education system, or feed the world, or whatever, whatever the reasons they give us, but in the end of course they are seeking power if they are going to run for office.
And so there's a desire for power. There's a lot of affection and bonding and care for those you are bonded with and other primates. There are the sexual preoccupations that they have which humans have of course also, and so all of these tendencies, the basic tendencies that you have in your life of survival and social relationships and so on, you're going to find in the other primates. It's in the areas of language and abstraction that you're going to find the differences.
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