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Are We in Anthropodenial? To endow animals with human emotions has long been a scientific taboo. But if we do not, we risk missing something fundamental, about both animals and us. BY FRANS DE WAAL HEN GUESTS ARRIVE AT THE YERKES sin of anthropomorphism, of turning nonhumans WRegional Primate Research Center in into humans. The word comes from the Greek, Georgia, where I work, they usually pay a visit to meaning “human form,” and it was the ancient the chimpanzees. And often, when she sees them Greeks who first gave the practice a bad reputation. approaching the compound, an adult female chim- They did not have chimpanzees in mind: the panzee named Georgia will hurry to the spigot to philosopher Xenophanes objected to Homer’s poet- collect a mouthful of water. She’ll then casually ry because it treated Zeus and the other gods as if mingle with the rest of the colony behind the mesh they were people. How could we be so arrogant, fence, and not even the sharpest observer will notice Xenophanes asked, as to think that the gods should anything unusual. If necessary, Georgia will wait look like us? If horses could draw pictures, he sug- minutes, with her lips closed, until the visitors come gested mockingly, they would no doubt make their near. Then there will be shrieks, laughs, jumps— gods look like horses. and sometimes falls—when she suddenly sprays them. Nowadays the intellectual descendants of Xenophanes warn against perceiving animals to be I have known quite a few apes that are good at like ourselves. There are, for example, the behavior- surprising people, naive and otherwise. Heini ists, who follow psychologist B. F. Skinner in view- Hediger, the great Swiss zoo biologist, recounts ing the actions of animals as responses shaped by how he—being prepared to meet the challenge and rewards and punishments rather than the result of paying attention to the ape’s every move—got internal decision making, emotions, or intentions. drenched by an experienced chimpanzee. I once They would say that Georgia was not “up to” any- found myself in a similar situation with Georgia; thing when she sprayed water on her victims. Far she had taken a drink from the spigot and was from planning and executing a naughty plot, sneaking up to me. I looked her straight in the eye Georgia merely fell for the irresistible reward of and pointed my finger at her, warning in Dutch, “I human surprise and annoyance. Whereas any person have seen you!” She immediately stepped back, let acting like her would be scolded, arrested, or held some of the water dribble from her mouth, and accountable, Georgia is somehow innocent. swallowed the rest. I certainly do not wish to claim that she understands Dutch, but she must have Behaviorists are not the only scientists who sensed that I knew what she was up to, and that I have avoided thinking about the inner life of ani- was not going to be an easy target. mals. Some sociobiologists—researchers who look for the roots of behavior in evolution—depict ani- Now, no doubt even a casual reader will have mals as “survival machines” and “preprogrammed noticed that in describing Georgia’s actions, I’ve robots” put on Earth to serve their “selfish” genes. implied human qualities such as intentions, the abil- There is a certain metaphorical value to these con- ity to interpret my own awareness, and a tendency cepts, but it has been negated by the misunderstand- toward mischief. Yet scientific tradition says I ing they’ve created. Such language can give the should avoid such language—I am committing the impression that only genes are entitled to an inner “Are We in Anthropodenial?” Frans B.M. de Waal. Discover. July 1997, pp. 50–53. 1 2 Are We in Anthropodenial? life. No more delusively anthropomorphizing idea this wall is beginning to look like a slice of Swiss has been put forward since the pet-rock craze of the cheese. I work on a daily basis with animals from 1970s. In fact, during evolution, genes—a mere which it is about as hard to distance yourself as batch of molecules—simply multiply at different from “Lucy,” the famed 3.2-million-year-old fossil rates, depending on the traits they produce in an australopithecine. If we owe Lucy the respect of an individual. To say that genes are selfish is like say- ancestor, does this not force a different look at the ing a snowball growing in size as it rolls down a hill apes? After all, as far as we can tell, the most signif- is greedy for snow. icant difference between Lucy and modern chim- panzees is found in their hips, not their craniums. Logically, these agnostic attitudes toward a mental life in animals can be valid only if they’re S SOON AS WE ADMIT THAT animals are applied to our own species as well. Yet it’s uncom- Afar more like our relatives than like machines, mon to find researchers who try to study human then anthropodenial becomes impossible and behavior as purely a matter of reward and punish- anthropomorphism becomes inevitable—and scien- ment. Describe a person as having intentions, feelings, and tifically acceptable. But not all forms of anthropo- thoughts and you most likely won’t encounter much morphism, of course. Popular culture bombards us resistance. Our own familiarity with our inner lives with examples of animals being humanized for all overrules whatever some school of thought might sorts of purposes, ranging from education to enter- claim about us. Yet despite this double standard tainment to satire to propaganda. Walt Disney, for toward behavior in humans and animals, modern example, made us forget that Mickey is a mouse, biology leaves us no choice other than to conclude and Donald a duck. George Orwell laid a cover of that we are animals. In terms of anatomy, physiolo- human societal ills over a population of livestock. I gy, and neurology we are really no more exception- was once struck by an advertisement for an oil com- al than, say, an elephant or a platypus is in its own pany that claimed its propane saved the environ- way. Even such presumed hallmarks of humanity as ment, in which a grizzly bear enjoying a pristine warfare, politics, culture, morality and language landscape had his arm around his mate’s shoulders. may not be completely unprecedented. For exam- In fact, bears are nearsighted and do not form pair- ple, different groups of wild chimpanzees employ bonds, so the image says more about our own different technologies—some fish for termites with behavior than theirs. sticks, others crack nuts with stones—that are trans- mitted from one generation to the next through a Perhaps that was the intent. The problem is, we process reminiscent of human culture. do not always remember that, when used in this way, anthropomorphism can provide insight only Given these discoveries, we must be very care- into human affairs and not into the affairs of ani- ful not to exaggerate the uniqueness of our species. mals. When my book Chimpanzee Politics came out The ancients apparently never gave much thought to in France, in 1987, my publisher decided (unbe- this practice, the opposite of anthropomorphism, knownst to me) to put François Mitterrand and and so we lack a word for it. I will call it anthropo- Jacques Chirac on the cover with a chimpanzee denial: a blindness to the humanlike characteristics between them. I can only assume he wanted to of other animals, or the animal-like characteristics imply that these politicians acted like “mere” apes. of ourselves. Yet by doing so he went completely against the whole point of my book, which was not to ridicule Those who are in anthropodenial try to build a people but to show that chimpanzees live in com- brick wall to separate humans from the rest of the plex societies full of alliances and power plays that animal kingdom. They carry on the tradition of in some ways mirror our own. René Descartes, who declared that while humans possessed souls, animals were mere automatons. You can often hear similar attempts at anthro- This produced a serious dilemma when Charles pomorphic humor in the crowds that form around Darwin came along: If we descended from such the monkey exhibit at a typical zoo. Isn’t it interest- automatons, were we not automatons ourselves? If ing that antelopes, lions, and giraffes rarely elicit not, how did we get to be so different? hilarity? But people who watch primates end up hooting and yelling, scratching themselves in Each time we must ask such a question, anoth- exaggeration, and pointing at the animals while er brick is pulled out of the dividing wall, and to me shouting, “I had to look twice, Larry I thought it Are We in Anthropodenial? 3 was you!” In my mind, the laughter reflects anthro- ic textures on small objects in the mud with the podenial: it is a nervous reaction caused by an keenest sense of touch of any animal on Earth. uncomfortable resemblance. Humans can barely imagine a star-nosed That very resemblance, however, can allow us mole’s Umwelt—a German term for the environ- to make better use of anthropomorphism, but for ment as perceived by the animal. Obviously, the this we must view it as a means rather than an end. closer a species is to us, the easier it is to enter its It should not be our goal to find some quality Umwelt.

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