Negeren Frans Quotes

Elephant altruism on the Kenyan plains. With her tusks, Grace (right) lifted the fallen three-ton Eleanor to her feet, then tried to get her to walk by pushing her. But Eleanor fell again and eventually died, leaving Grace vocalizing with streaming temporal glands - a sign of deep distress. Being matriarchs of different herds, these two elephants were likely unrelated. ~ Frans De Waal

Female bonobos form a strong sisterhood. They rule through female solidarity. ~ Frans De Waal

If I were God, I'd work on the reach of empathy. ~ Frans De Waal

Food-deprived chickens that were not particularly good at noticing the finer distinctions of a maze task.5 ~ Frans De Waal

We need to separate the process of evolution - which is, indeed, a self-serving process - and the actual motivations of animals. ~ Frans De Waal

The common argument that men are naturally polygamous and women naturally monogamous is as full of holes as Swiss cheese. ~ Frans De Waal

If there is any form of contagion that is adaptive, it is the immediate response to the fear of others. If others are fearful, there may be good reason for you to be fearful too. ~ Frans De Waal

Very ancient parts of the brain are involved in moral decision making. ~ Frans De Waal

I want to interpret the natural world and our links to it. It's driven by the belief of many world-class scientists that we're in the midst of an extinction crisis ... This time it's us that's doing it. ~ Frans Lanting

En route to such trees and get up before dawn, something they normally hate to do. ~ Frans De Waal

The intuitive connection children feel with animals can be a tremendous source of joy. The unconditional love received from pets, and the lack of artifice in the relationship, contrast sharply with the much trickier dealings with members of their own species. ~ Frans De Waal

Drosophila has long been our main workhorse in genetics, yielding insight in the relation between chromosomes and genes. ~ Frans De Waal

Being both more systematically brutal than chimps and more empathetic than
bonobos, we are by far the most bipolar ape. Our societies are never completely peaceful, never completely competitive, never ruled by sheer selfishness, and never perfectly moral. ~ Frans De Waal

Male bonobos really don't fit the human male ideal. ~ Frans De Waal

We need falsifications to make the past inhabitable. ~ Frans Kellendonk

A species's cognition is generally as good as what it needs for its survival. ~ Frans De Waal

The evolutionary struggle for survival is really a self-serving series of blows and stabs, and yet it can lead to extremely social animals like dolphins, wolves or, for that matter, primates. ~ Frans De Waal

Not unlike Lorenz's emphasis on knowing the whole animal, Imanishi urged us to empathize with the species under study. We need to get under its skin, he said, or as we would nowadays put it, try to enter its Umwelt. ~ Frans De Waal

Conventions are often surrounded with the solemn language of morality, but in fact they have little to do with it. ~ Frans De Waal

A wise man, once he is past fifty, does not befuddle his senses with strong drink, nor make violent love in the cool spring night, nor dance on his hands. ~ Frans G. Bengtsson

I became interested in photography during my first visit to the United States. I was a student at a university in Holland. I was overwhelmed by the beauty of the American West. That was when I learned about the tradition of nature in American photography. ~ Frans Lanting

In every language, labels for adulterous women are far worse than those for similarly adventurous men. When a woman is a "a slut," a man is merely a skirt chaser. ~ Frans De Waal

Chimps don't have language. Humans actively instruct others about how things should be done. Chimpanzees probably pick up cultural traditions by observation. ~ Frans De Waal

Chimps cannot tell us anything about peaceful relations, because chimps have only different degrees of hostility between communities. Whereas bonobos do tell us something; they tell us about the possibility of having peaceful relationships. ~ Frans De Waal

Ernst Mayr characterized the Cartesian view of animals as dumb automatons.2 ~ Frans De Waal

Nature's my muse and it's been my passion. ~ Frans Lanting

Personally, I think it is possible to build a society that is moral on a nonreligious basis, but the jury is still out on that. ~ Frans De Waal

So, don't believe anyone who says that since nature is based on a struggle for life, we need to live like this as well. Many animals survive not by eliminating each other or keeping everything for themselves, but by cooperating and sharing. This applies most definitely to pack hunters, such as wolves or killer whales, but also to our closest relatives, the primates. ~ Frans De Waal

The role of inequity in society is grossly underestimated. Inequity is not good for your health, basically. ~ Frans De Waal

Studies of reconciliation in primates have demonstrated that if the relationship value increases between two parties they are more willing to make peace. ~ Frans De Waal

We start out postulating sharp boundaries, such as between humans and apes, or between apes and monkeys, but are in fact dealing with sand castles that lose much of their structure when the sea of knowledge washes over them. They turn into hills, leveled ever more, until we are back to where evolutionary theory always leads us: a gently sloping beach. ~ Frans De Waal

One can train dolphins to jump synchronously because they do so in the wild, and one can teach horses to run together at the same pace because wild horses do the same. ~ Frans De Waal

Exclusive homosexuality is not very common in nature. ~ Frans De Waal

It seems safe to say that apes know about death, such as that is different from life and permanent. The same may apply to a few other animals, such as elephants, which pick up ivory or bones of a dead herd member, holding the pieces in their trunks and passing them around. Some pachyderms return for years to the spot where a relative died, only to touch and inspect the relics. Do they miss each other? Do they recall how he or she was during life? ~ Frans De Waal

Chimpanzees have very strong preferences and aversions that are completely personality-linked. The people who are unsuccessful in working with chimpanzees are those who take this personally. ~ Frans De Waal

We have a tendency to describe the human condition in lofty terms, such as a quest for freedom or striving for a virtuous life, but the life sciences hold a more mundane view: It's all about security, social companionships, and a full belly. There is obvious tension between both views, which recalls that famous dinner conversation between a Russian literary critic and the writer Ivan Turgenev: 'We haven't yet solved the problem of God,' the critic yelled, 'and you want to eat! ~ Frans De Waal

Religions have a strong binding function and a cohesive element. They emphasize the primacy of the community as opposed to the individual, and they also help set one community apart from another that doesn't share their beliefs. ~ Frans De Waal

Ultimately these battles are about females, which means that the fundamental difference between our two closest relatives is that one resolves sexual issues with power, while the other resolves power issues with sex. ~ Frans De Waal

Would anyone test the memory of human children by throwing them into a swimming pool to see if they remember where to get out? Yet ~ Frans De Waal

I think we need to start thinking about grounding our moral systems in our biology. ~ Frans De Waal

In other words, both macaques and rats volunteer for tests only when they feel confident, suggesting that they know their own knowledge. ~ Frans De Waal

On August 16, 1996, when an eight-year-old female gorilla named Binti Jua helped a three-year-old boy who had fallen eighteen feet into the primate exhibit at Chicago's Brookfield Zoo. Reacting immediately, Binti scooped up the boy and carried him to safety. She sat down on a log in a stream, cradling the boy in her lap, giving him a few gentle back pats before taking him to the waiting zoo staff. This simple act of sympathy, captured on video and shown around the world, touched many hearts, and Binti was hailed as a heroine. It was the first time in U.S. history that an ape figured in the speeches of leading politicians, who held her up as a model of compassion. ~ Frans De Waal

I think there's some evidence that we're empathic by nature. There is some evidence from studies of babies and young children that they resonate with the pain of others, and there's some work by Frans de Waal that other primates also resonate with the pain of others. ~ Paul Bloom

I'm personally a nonbeliever, so I'm struggling with if we really need religion. ~ Frans De Waal