Frans de Waal’s The Age of Empathy: Nature’s Lessons for a Kinder Society is a lesson for humans, culled from studies on primate behavior. The fascinating lessons push the boundaries between man and animal. The book is also a plea for the use in human society of the concept of ‘living together.’

Frans de Waal, a multi-awarded primatologist and ethologist who became one of 2007 Time Magazine 100 World’s Most Influential People Today, is an author of numerous books and scientific papers. His research centers on primate social behavior, including conflict resolution, cooperation, inequity aversion, and food-sharing.

In a time when humans look out for their own interest in the name of survival, animals teach us that we are our brothers’ keepers and that we have the natural instinct for compassion. de Waal tells us his observations from years of fieldwork and laboratory research on chimpanzees, bonobos, and capuchins, as well as on dolphins and elephants, ‘that many animals are predisposed to take care of one another, come to one another’s aid, and, in some cases, take life-saving action.’ For de Waal, every human is destined to be humane.

In The Age of Empathy, de Waal says, “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.”

Man, today, has seen greed as an organic result of the human will to survive. de Waal exhorts everyone to believe that empathy is required for survival and that we must completely revise our assumptions about human nature.

Empathy is more sophisticated than greed and self-preservation, in fact. And this is seen among nonhuman primates. In a national park in the Ivory Coast, chimpanzees have been observed licking the blood of comrades attacked by leopards, and slowing their pace to allow the wounded to follow the group. In the same community, there have also been several cases of adoption of orphans by adult females, as well as by males. Among nonhuman primates, there is the collective interest to cooperate.

Just when the world has turned aggressively selfish and competitive, the nonhuman primates as well as other mammals have retained their instinct for altruism. Humans can learn from the chimps the ability to be genuinely concerned for the welfare of others.

Photo courtesy of Frans de Waal

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