Frans de Waal: Primates, evolution and morality

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Hour 2

Guests: Frans de Waal

Morality is not unique to humans.  Biologist FRANS DE WAAL has found ethical behavior like empathy, altruism, and fairness in chimpanzees, bonobos and capuchin monkeys.  De Waal is the director of the Living Links Center at the Yerkes Primate Center in Georgia and the author of a number of books on primates including “Chimpanzee Politics” and “The Age of Empathy.”  His new book is “The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism Among the Primates” and in it he writes that human morality comes from evolution — from the bottom up, not the top down.  Frans de Waal joins us to talk about what we can learn from our primate relations.

Photo by Flickr user Chi King

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