It's no secret that humans and apes share a host of traits, from the tribal communities we form to our irrepressible
curiosity. We have a common ancestor, scientists tell us, so it's natural that we act alike. But not all of these
parallels are so appealing: the chimpanzee, for example, can be as vicious and manipulative as any human.
Yet there's more to our shared primate heritage than just our violent streak. In Our Inner Ape, Frans de Waal,
one of the world's great primatologists and a renowned expert on social behavior in apes, presents the provocative
idea that our noblest qualities--generosity, kindness, altruism--are as much a part of our nature as are our baser
instincts. After all, we share them with another primate: the lesser-known bonobo. As genetically similar to man
as the chimpanzee, the bonobo has a temperament and a lifestyle vastly different from those of its genetic cousin.
Where chimps are aggressive, territorial, and hierarchical, bonobos are gentle, loving, and erotic (sex for bonobos
is as much about pleasure and social bonding as it is about reproduction).
While the parallels between chimp brutality and human brutality are easy to see, de Waal suggests that the conciliatory
bonobo is just as legitimate a model to study when we explore our primate heritage. He even connects humanity's
desire for fairness and its morality with primate behavior, offering a view of society that contrasts markedly
with the caricature people have of Darwinian evolution. It's plain that our finest qualities run deeper in our
DNA than experts have previously thought.
Frans de Waal has spent the last two decades studying our closest primate relations, and his observations of each
species in Our Inner Ape encompass the spectrum of human behavior. This is an audacious book, an engrossing discourse
that proposes thought-provoking and sometimes shocking connections among chimps, bonobos, and those most paradoxical
of apes, human beings.