Download Our Inner Ape djvu

Very good stuff.. The book has good lessons for humans to learn:
1) Who are we and where do we come from? We are not so unique as we think we are. A good book to get your ego in a better perspective.
2) Where are we going to? BY thinking that our inner ape is top of the pop and nothing else matters; we do forget all these beautiful gifts of nature around us. They should get out of our way so we can multiply up to 10 billion and put them our near relatives into zoos, red lists and history books.
But however one wonders if these descriptions of some imprisoned individuals give a true picture of the interactions between apes like observing the behavior of a prison male population would not present a good picture of people. Is there a role and function of a Gamma male for instance.

This is a wonderful synopsis of Frans de Waal's decades of research on chimpanzee and bonobo societies and what it tells us about human evolution. Like Jared Diamond's The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal (P.S.),Our Inner Ape: A Leading Primatologist Explains Why We Are Who We Are attempts to answer some of the big questions about humanity and human evolution. Like Diamond's books, this one will change your conception of human evolution and what it means to be human.

In some ways, this book should really be called "The Inner Human of Apes," since the book focuses on the apes more than on humans. Since most readers know about human emotions, this focus makes sense. What makes the book so interesting is that de Waal knows chimps and bonobos so well that he can go beyond the stereotypical images of both species and provide some intimate anecdotes to illustrate his points. In particular, de Waal goes to great lengths to illustrate the entire spectrum of ape emotions and society, including regret, political alliances, jealousy, foresight, reconciliation, and empathy. These emotions, which many once believed to distinguish humans from animals, can clearly be seen in our next of kin.

Some of the anecdotes are so amazing as to make the book worth the purchase price alone. De Waal frequently invokes the political alliance of two male chimpanzees, Nikkie and Yoern. This pair resembled the relationship between a political master and upstart (think John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson). At one point, Nikkie and Yoern got into a fight (as political allies occasionally do), and Nikkie bit Yoern on his leg. In order to make his younger colleague jealous, Yoern would subsequently pretend to limp whenever Nikkie was watching. Talk about seeking a sympathy vote!

By the end of the book, you'll realize that the real issue isn't whether apes feel emotions or engage in society, but whether we can understand their lives. De Waal describes the methodology of some of his experiments, but acknowledges that too often human experiments are designed by a human mind as if for human subjects. For example, one researcher who sought to assess whether chimps could tell faces apart, showed chimps pictures of different humans. When the chimps did not appear to recognize the differences, the researcher assumed they lacked that aspect of intelligence. However, when later researchers showed the chimps the faces of different chimps, the chimps could recognize the differences. Just as we have difficulty telling chimps apart from each other, they find it easier to recognize differences in chimp features than human faces. Thus, as de Waal notes, there are no stupid apes, just stupid experiments.

This is more a comment following reading this remarkable book than a thorough review, I don't have much to add to the other positive reviews of this remarkable book, often invaluable insights, clearly and accessibly written, often funny, perhaps the most constructive book so far this century. Hard to find fault but I think I may have one, he focuses on the polarity between our "nice" peaceful, egalitarian, cooperative, sharing side & our "nasty" violent, competitive, hierarchical, selfish side, advocating wisely the happy medium or a hybrid of the two is best and most realistic.

But he doesn't say much at all about another major player in human affairs, which is neither "evil" nor "good": plain stupidity. His book was published in 2005, far as I know no one has taken his excellent advice, why? Could be stupidity. He spends so much time trying to point out how apes are as clever as us in many ways it probably wouldn't have worked if he'd also argued man is the stupidest animal ever "the only animal that can't tell fantasy from reality" as the bestselling shrink Dr Al Bernstein put it ( he also states, again somewhat humorously, we are likely to oppose or dismiss evidence, no matter how strong, that we might not be perfect unless we are depressed, a bit of a problem for the truth, it's interesting many (most?) of the great philosophers suffered depression) .

So what is human stupidity? Not sure, probably partly the need for males to be rather oblivious/attracted to danger in order to hunt, explore etc in early societies which he talks about. It's not clear being rather indifferent to your and others welfare is still beneficial in modern society. This indifference is probably achieved at least partly through an ability to focus exclusively on one small aspect of a situation (such as "the kill" in a hunt) a stereotyped male trait (women "multi-taskers"), marked feature of autism (much more common in males as De Waal notes) and a hallmark of industrial society with it's hyper-specialization.

The reason this makes us the stupidest animal is we have magnified our powers to that of gods, through countless innovations and inventions (at least industrial scientific man has, which is virtually everyone now) but by comparison are only slightly smarter than other apes and still unconsciously act on much the same instincts and tendencies (as our economy/environment becomes more desire/addiction based (Thompson. The Fix 2012) we may actually be getting even dumber than other apes in the sense of being more impulsive, despite the rising I.Q. (attributed to increased problem-solving, having more problems is not exactly a clear indication your house is in order)). We bite off far more than we can possibly chew (create problems too big & complicated to be solved with our intelligence & presumably instincts (usually because of narrow focus we think everything's super)) this is unique in the animal kingdom as far as I know, although I understand it is not unusual for a species to be responsible for it's own extinction in other ways. I don't know if there's a solution, the smaller scale, simpler, community units he advocates at the end (modest scale & complexity for our modest intelligence) might help but can we get there from here? Can Humpty be put back together again?

Another variant of stupidity seem to stem from ego, again I seem to have noticed more in us males. Big egos get over confident and think they can do no wrong, result :stupidity. Scientists who invariably want to "change the world" for no absolutely no reason other than to become the alpha male, with reckless, basically autistic (a scientific finding), disregard for the likelihood their invention will just be another nail in the coffin of the planet is just one example (e.g., advances that increase the human population, such as the sacred goal of "a cure for cancer" may contribute to the extinction of our and other species through overpopulation. Or Einstein would be the stupidest person in history so far, as he either didn't realize or didn't care his means of achieving primate dominance would be responsible for the atom bomb) I think this is hierarchy related, a big ego seem to result from thinking you're at the top, might be the rich list, might be delusions about attractiveness, coolness, moral &/or racial superiority.

Also insecurity at being toward the bottom of a hierarchy produces panic which leads to stupid 'thinking' in my opinion. I don't recall if de Waal writes about this, but another primate writer, Mazur, does (Biosociology of Dominance and Deference) noting those low in primate hierarchies are anxious, those higher up are usually calm. In my opinion there is a epidemic of insecurity in modern society, perhaps because the inequality is astronomical with globalism, I think this afflicts us males more as we need to display dominance to attract a mate, a female merely needs to mate with an "alpha" being lower in the hierarchy usually makes a female more attractive..

Balancing hierarchy with more egalitarian institutions as de Waal suggests might go a long way to healing this painful affliction, but it's not clear to me we are smart enough to do anything of the sort & most insecure men probably wouldn't be interested, better to play or watch some game where they can fantasize about being dominant.

I'm not suggesting we are completely stupid at all, just that's a player in our make-up that just could get the last word.........maybe the book has depressed me because it's so balanced, we're as good (depending on your perspective) as we are evil ( according to whatever that perspective happens to be) so why care either way about the fate of humanity? I suppose if you really don't care either way you won't have to suffer depression, you'll be emotionally neutral, like the neutral face people usually wear in public places.

This book does makes you take stock of who we are as a species. The most Salient point was the misrepresentation of the commonly abused concept of "Survival of the Fittest" and the way it is used to justify things like unbridled capitalism. In the Ape world it would be better phrased as "Survival of the Most Cooperative". Any big bully does not last long, and the others soon gang up to put an end to the tyranny. In one case some group members went so far as to tear the bully's balls off. Really! A good, good book from a true Scientist. I liked it but it does have a dark side.