http://www.care2.com/greenliving/do-primates-feel-compassion.html
Do Primates Feel Compassion?
By Tijn Touber, Ode Magazine
Morality is usually seen as the exclusive province of humans with highly developed brains. But world-famous primatologist Frans de Waal believes primates like chimpanzees and bonobos are moral creatures too. Ethics, he feels, is an inborn biological trait.
That is not the prevailing scientific view. De Waal describes that perspective in his book Our Inner Ape (Riverhead Books, 2005) as follows: “If people commit mass murder, we call them ‘animals.’ But if they give money to the poor, we praise them for their ‘humanity.’ He goes on to argue that animal impulses aren’t only “lower” feelings like fear, rage and territorial instincts, but “higher” emotions like justice and sympathy.
By declaring ethics a biological phenomenon, De Waal calls the prominent theory of “the selfish gene” into question. Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins came up with the term to express the idea that organisms are essentially nothing but vehicles for genetic survival. Human existence, according to Dawkins, is driven by genes’ reproductive instincts. He argues that people behave morally only to impress others, which gives them a greater chance of survival.
De Waal considers this a cynical position, not supported by his many years of research into the moral characteristics of primates, specifically the bonobos, who are believed to be humans’ closest living relatives. Bonobos are remarkably friendly, sociable creatures; not for nothing are they called “the hippie apes.” But even their more churlish brethren, the chimpanzees, demonstrate moral behaviour: They share food, show a strong sense of right and wrong and exhibit feelings of shame, guilt, sympathy and concern.
This idea was demonstrated in 1996 when a 3-year-old boy fell 18 feet into the primate enclosure at Chicago’s Brookfield Zoo. A gorilla named Binti Jua picked up the child and carried him to safety. She sat down on a log and rocked the boy on her lap, patting him a few times on his back, before taking him to waiting zoo staff. Her show of sympathy, captured on video and shown around the world, touched many hearts.
Yet images like this do not convince some scientists of animals’ capacity for moral behaviour. In his book If Dogs Could Talk: Exploring the Canine Mind (North Point Press, 2005), Hungarian ethologist Vilmos Csányi argues that canines are driven mainly by emotions. For instance, he argues it’s a misconception to think that a dog who’s done something naughty is hiding under the table out of shame; what the dog really feels is fear of its owner’s harsh reprimand. “Shame is an emotion of a very high order,” writes Csányi, “and among humans, it is the expression of very complex social relations, which, I believe, dogs did not need during the course of domestication.”
In spite of his skepticism about morality outside the human community, Csányi’s book is peppered with moving examples of exceptional behaviour by animals. Take the story of the elephant who thundered menacingly into a compound of wildlife scientists in Kenya. The staff fled in panic, except one employee who recognized the elephant as a female he had looked after for six years. The elephant had since been successfully integrated into a wild herd in a national park and had obviously come by to give her caretaker a hug. She touched him gently with her trunk, embracing him occasionally. After half an hour, she left again, trumpeting loudly. What else can you call that but love?
Whether love and morality go hand in hand, however, is a subject for another day.
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26 comments
add your comment »Definitely. I know because I've seen how my cats act at times of tension or sadness. Once my mom was really sad and crying so much, and my cat, not knowing what exactly is going on, but sensing that her owner isn't feeling well, started licking her hands!
It is amazing how they have their own little ways of telling you things, and I love them for trying so hard to communicate when people nowadays seem to not even bother about one another.
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Subjucation of animals by the human animal is a product of years of evolutionary dynamics. Starting with the elementary requirements of the caveman to eat and cloth himself and moving on to the advent of religions that sought to capitalise on the already exploitative relationship between man and "beast" Thus religion gave us the tenuous devil=beast dynamic and a scapegoat in the literal sense of the word. Perhaps this is why the present day Church is so deafeningly silent on the religious abuse of animals in Spain. Something along the lines of keep the neanderthals amused and they won't desert the Church maybe! Religion has constantly denied the animal kingdom the benefit of recognition as individuals, choosing to parade the idea of mans superiority to animals. What a shock these Church people are in for when they reach the crowded portals of Heaven and it is manned by formerly abused animals and then the meaning of there being no room at the inn will perhaps have some resonance as they are redirected to Satan's warm basement! So with a lineage like that one would have thought that scientists would know better but oh no they simply substitute their version of religion and repeat the process all over again torturing them in vivisection labs and screaming in incredulity when they discover that animals have not only emotions, feelings guilt altruism etc but they also have souls which they have not sold to the devil! Those of us who are owned by animals have known this all along!
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Stamford Univ. Interspecies Commmunication Program of teaching primates American Sign Language & the Gorilla Sign Language - the primates tell you outright their feelings, their ideas, their needs. Go see for yourself
& learn. How can we have this discussion when nobody is aware of this research. How can we judge whether an animal is moral or not if you cannot talk to them. Learn to talk to them-do your research-- then let's talk about it. Thank you
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Morality is usually seen as the exclusive province of humans with highly developed brains. But world-famous primatologist Frans de Waal believes primates like chimpanzees and bonobos are moral creatures too. Ethics, he feels, is an inborn biological trait. That is not the prevailing scientific view.
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It makes me so sad that we allow animals like elephants to suffer abuse so that they can be taught to amuse us as circus performers. I wish there were a law to prevent animals from being taken from their natural habitats to be used in this way.
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Sherri G: Your comments mirror so much what I would have said, that I don't need to say anything....(But I will, ha!) It is comforting to me to know how many other people see what I do; ALL creatures deserve respect, and they all have complex feelings. We are in illustrious company of course; when I read how Albert Schweitzer felt about reverence for other life, I cried because I was so happy to know the feelings I had were validated by a respected well known person.
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To say that humans have "highly developed" brains makes me laugh!
And the assertion that humans are the only creatures that show compassion and moral tendencies also makes me laugh. We are so completely arrogant - it just amazes me.
I agree with the comments already posted that say the only reason we don't see the compassion of animals is - they don't speak our language. We are so arrogant, dense and ignorant - and that has firmly shut our minds to the possibility that we aren't that much different from any other creature on this planet.
I have lived with animals all my life. I respect them, and I have seen the complete range of emotions that are only supposed to be human traits.
I think the real reason that most people close their minds to the possiblity of animals having all the same needs and emotions that we have is, this would force us to re-examine the way we treat animals - from zoo's, to slaughterhouses, to animal shelters.
We would have to take ourselves down a notch, and elevate all the other truly amazing creatures on this planet.
That occurance will take a "highly developed" brain.
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How many of these so called scientists have spent time with Stamford University Interspecies Communication program with Koko, Nmunde and Michael (deceased). These Lowland Gorillas doing ASL and GSL with humans express their feelings very well as well as their needs and even what they think about different subject matter. They are amazing. Everybody on this blog and every scientist doing so called research on these topics should first go to the Koko.org website every single night & read, watch the U tube etc about this research. Keep current. If we could talk/sign to the animals, they would tell us and would make fools out of most of us. (you can now tell I am getting upset with some people's beliefs - it is endless) We have research - learn about it. Thank you
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Where zoos are concerned, before a zoo can take in any animal, research needs to be done on how to meet the physical, mental & emotional needs of that animal. That also means re-evaluating the space needs. And this is going to be hard to do when humans do not want to admit animals have emotional & mental needs to be met by us if we are taking their freedom. On one side of the coin, a zoo can save the animal from the horrors of the wild regarding poaching, culling, bushmeat market but if the zoo cannot make the animal happy - 2 wrongs do not make a right. Zoos should be totally redesigned so each animal can be happy physically, mentally & emotionally. And this costs big money. More people need to donate land so small zoos can move to much larger facilities. emily
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I have read many books on animal psychology and emotion both as a lay person and as a philosophy student, and the 'evidence' is for them feeling compassion and other emotions, obviously there are inter-species and probably individual differences. It is evidence of the coldness of the scientist and philosophers that have dominated state-sanctioned conceptual schemes and ideologies that we actually need to find evidence to prove what is in front of our faces - I read Dawkins as a philosophy student and the general consensus was - its just a way of looking, his way and the cold bastard way!
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