Behavior May Suggest We're Not Only Human

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When Emory University primatologist Frans de Waal read a news story that said Microsoft's chief executive, Steve Ballmer, had hurled a chair across the room on hearing an employee was going to work for rival Google, the scientist immediately made a connection with his own research: "When I see such behavior, I think of a chimpanzee."

Another time, a researcher that de Waal knew told him that whenever she chatted with another scientist in the hallway, her boss would get upset. He would later drop by her office and tell her she ought to stay clear of that person.

"He was constantly interfering whenever she had a contact with an important person," de Waal said. "Chimpanzees also divide and rule. You have an alpha male, and he will try to keep his supporters away from his rivals. His supporters are in trouble if they groom one of his rivals."

Does such behavior make you laugh? Well, if de Waal and other scientists are right, you may have to address some of your mirth to that face in the mirror.

Over the past two centuries, people have had to disabuse themselves about various ideologies asserting that humans are fundamentally different from other animals. Biologists have shown that our arms and legs and organs have long evolutionary histories. Beliefs about the uniqueness of human behavior might well be the last bastion of our superiority complex, but research by de Waal and many others suggests that even this redoubt may be crumbling.

"I have done studies of reconciliation and coalition strategies in chimpanzees," de Waal said. "Business managers tell me that reminds them so much of what people do.

Good stuff, it also looks at behavior patterns in birds and the nature of aggression and altruism. I also warn that it goes into a bit of into 'Sociobiology' which has it's own criticisms and conclusions. This emerging field started with the bombshell work in 1975 and since then has had help from Chomsky and Dawkins.