2 minute read
Community Spotlight: A Lecture by Renowned Author Frans de Waal
By Victoria R. Crosby
Tucker resident, Primatologist and Ethologist Frans de Waal, the Charles Howard Candler Professor of Primate Behavior in the Department of Psychology at Emory University’s Psychology Department, now retired, is an internationally renowned author who was named as one of Time Magazine’s top 100 most influential people in the world. Neighbors of de Waal, Susan and Joel Gilbert, invited him to give a lecture for local residents, which he titled, “Politics, Morality, Gender, You Name It, Other Primates Have It, Too.”
The free event was open to everyone, and several hundred people attended.
Chimpanzee Politics was Frans de Waal’s first book in 1982 and is still being published. This book, and his TED talk, compare the behavior of chimps and their power struggles to human behavior in the political arena.
During his lecture de Waal showed video footage of humorous and intelligent animal behavior and cited the experiments of Wolfgang Kohler between 1912 and 1920 to prove that animals can think. In one experiment chimps were given a box and sticks and attempted to knock down bananas hung up high. One chimp positioned the box at the tallest level and was able to knock down the bananas easily. Three female chimps used this method to bring down a drone, which showed pre-planning, as the chimp waited on the box for the drone to pass overhead and used the stick to knock it down.
Another clip showed two monkeys being fed pieces of cucumbers. However, when one was fed a cucumber piece and another was given a grape, the chimp who received the cucumber got angry, threw the cucumber, and raged at the trainer, like a two-year-old child’s temper tantrum. The audience recognized this sort of behavior and laughed.
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