Throughout his life, Frans de Waal has been concerned with the question of how much animal there is in man or, conversely, how much man in animal. In doing so, the Dutch behavioral scientist has persistently scratched at man’s self-image, or more precisely at the idea that Homo sapiens is unique and somehow better than other animal species. “We constantly overestimate the complexity of our actions. This is how you can summarize my career: I have brought monkeys a little closer to humans, but I have also brought humans down a little,” de Waal said in 2014, according to a statement Emory University, where he taught for decades.
Fransiscus Bernardus Maria “Frans” de Waal was born on October 29, 1948 in ‘s-Hertogenbosch, Netherlands. He had five brothers. Even as a child he is said to have been interested in animals and bred mice and leeches. In 1966 he began studying biology in Nijmegen.
After an argument, the chimpanzees kissed
During his doctoral thesis, de Waal focused on the behavior of primates and possible parallels to humans. He observed a group of chimpanzees at Arnhem Zoo for more than 6,000 hours. He discovered that the monkeys made up after an argument. “I found out because I saw opponents coming together after fights and kissing and hugging,” de Waal said, according to his university’s obituary.
In 1981, de Waal moved to the United States, where he continued working with primates at the National Primate Research Center in Wisconsin. A year later he published “Chimpanzee Politics.” In this book, which was published in Germany under the title “Our Hairy Cousins”, he postulates that chimpanzees are not soulless, purely instinct-controlled creatures, but show human-like behavior. In 1988, de Waal became a professor of behavioral science at the University of Wisconsin; In 1990, Emory University in Atlanta appointed him professor of psychobiology. From 1991, de Waal was also director of the Living Links Center, whose aim is to research human evolution through comparisons with other primates.
De Waal published 16 popular science books, translated into 20 languages, and hundreds of scientific articles. Most of them are about parallels between the behavior of humans and other primates such as chimpanzees, bonobos and capuchin monkeys. De Waal was concerned with the ability to cooperate and with culture in the animal kingdom. He discovered that monkeys were capable of many cognitive feats that had long been thought only of humans. And he found that the animals feel compassion and have a sense of justice.
His bottom line: The predispositions for many human behaviors and traits are also present in many other primates. Humans are therefore a type of extreme ape who is more aggressive but also more sensitive than their close relatives.
The capuchin monkey angrily threw his reward in the experimenter’s face
One of de Waal’s most famous experiments is the so-called cucumber-grape study. It suggests that monkeys, like humans, have a sense of justice – and get upset when they are treated unfairly. In the experiment, two capuchin monkeys sit next to each other in separate Plexiglas cages. Both should give the experimenter a stone, and both will receive a reward if they do so. But while one animal is rewarded with pieces of cucumber, the other gets a grape – a sweet treat that the animals like much more.
A video that de Waal shot and showed in numerous lectures shows how the monkey reacts with the pieces of cucumber when he sees that his neighbor gets a better reward for the same task: Although he initially takes the cucumber, he throws it to him But then he hits the experimenter in the face and shakes the plexiglass walls of his cage.
Anyone who sees this video can’t help but interpret the monkey’s reaction as anger and indignation at the unfair treatment. However, critics have repeatedly accused Frans de Waal of anthropomorphizing animals, especially in his popular science books. But his theses reached so many people that Time Magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2007. “We may accept that we are descended from monkeys,” it says. “But it takes people like Frans de Waal to remind us that we haven’t traveled that far yet.”
On March 14th, Frans de Waal died of cancer in Atlanta at the age of 75.