We humans like to think we are something special, that we have qualities no other animal possesses. Many people believe that our emotions are among thWe humans like to think we are something special, that we have qualities no other animal possesses. Many people believe that our emotions are among the things that make us human. Primatologist Frans De Waal used to go along with this prevailing belief, but he has spent many years studying our closest relatives, and he says “More and more I believe that all the emotions we are familiar with can be found one way or another in all mammals, and that the variation is only in the details, elaborations, applications, and intensity.” In Mama’s Last Hug he makes his case for this position, and the result is both fascinating and convincing.
De Waal says that modern emotion research puts too much stress on language, and that is part of the problem. We humans don’t use language to recognize and respond to emotions of other humans in our daily lives; we observe; and DeWaal uses observation as his scientific tool to argue engagingly, but also convincingly, in favor of a rich emotional life for animals other than humans.
He won me over in Chapter 1 with a description of a moving reunion between Mama, a 59-year-old chimpanzee who was on her deathbed, and 80-year-old Jan van Hooff, who had been De Waal’s dissertation advisor and who had worked with Mama for many years. If you are skeptical of De Waal’s description, the reunion video is available on YouTube, and to me there is no doubt about Mama’s genuine joy at seeing her old friend.
If DeWaal’s wonderful anecdotes do not convince you, consider his credentials. How often do you read a book by an IgNobel Prize winner? For those of you not familiar with the Ig Nobel prizes, they have been awarded annually since 1991 (on the Harvard campus but not by Harvard) to "honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think." The paper that won the Ig Nobel for De Waal was called “Faces and Behinds”, and it was a study in which his team learned that apes have a “whole-body” image of familiar individuals and could even pick out individuals they knew from pictures of that ape’s derriere.
My first reaction, of course, was to laugh, but then I had to recognize that this was clever work that tells me something rather impressive about apes.
I had more laughs, some more sad moments, and a lot of thoughtful moments throughout the book. Do read it; I am confident that you will come away with a greater feeling of kinship with all the creatures, great and small....more
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