Also by Frans de Waal
Chimpanzee Politics: Power and Sex Among Apes
Peacemaking Among Primates
Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals
Bonobo: The Forgotten Ape
Frans de Waal
For Catherine: my rock
Prologue: The Apes' Tea Party 1
Section 1 Cultural Glasses: The Way We See Other Animals 35
1 The Whole Animal: Childhood Talismans and Excessive Fear of Anthropomorphism 37
2 The Fate of Gurus: When Silverbacks Become Stumbling Blocks 85
3 Bonobos and Fig Leaves: Primate Hippies in a Puritan Landscape 127
4 Animal Art: Would You Hang a Congo on the Wall? 149
Section 2 What Is Culture, and Does It Exist in Nature? 177
5 Predicting Mount Fuji, and a Visit to Koshima, Where the Monkeys Salt Their Potatoes 179
6 The Last Rubicon: Can Other Animals Have Culture? 213
7 Tl'lie Nutcracker Suite: Reliance on Culture in Nature 239
8 Cultural Naturals: Tea and Tibetan Macaques 273
Section 3 Human Nature: The Way We See Ourselves 295
9 Apes with Self-Esteem: Abraham Maslow and the Taboo on Power 297
10 Survival of the Kindest: Of Selfish Genes and Unselfish Dogs 315
11 Down with Dualism! Two Millennia of Debate About Human Goodness 337
Epilogue: The Squirrel's Jump 359
Notes 365
Bibliography 389
Acknowledgments 407
Index 411
Mari is innately programmed in such a way that he needs a culture to complete him. Culture is not an alternative or replacement for instinct, but its outgrowth and supplement.
Mary Midgley, 1979
o Mendi, a cigar-smoking, brandy-drinking blue-collar worker with stocky legs and long arms, was used to having his name larger on the billboards than that of comedian Bob Hope, with whom he once co-starred. In the 1930s, he dominated Detroit's entertainment industry. Every day, he would show up in overalls at the side of the zoo director, who carried a cane and kept a watchful eye on his companion, who-being many times stronger than a grown man-had been known to molest unsuspecting bystanders. Such was Jo Mendi's fame that the chimpanzee drew a crowd twice as large as the one that greeted the presidential candidate visiting the city, an issue Franklin Delano Roosevelt's opponents didn't hesitate to bring to the nation's attention.'
Petermann, a performing chimpanzee at the Cologne Zoo in the 1980s, was less lucky. Like Jo Mendi, he had a huge following and was, behind the scenes, not to be trifled with. His relationship with the zoo director was less amicable, however. After attacking the director, Petermann was shot by the police. His fatal defiance of authority temporarily turned the ape into a martyr for the German anarchist movement.
Jo Mendi showing his table manners with zoo director, John Millen, in the 1930s (Photo courtesy of the Detroit Zoological Society).
Even today, Hollywood producers cannot resist throwing in a chimp or orangutan when their script asks for a laugh and they have failed to come up with anything better. An entire television show (The Chimp Channel) has been devoted to dressed-up apes trained to frantically move their mouths while an audio track with human speech gives the impression that they are talking.
The ape dinner parties that became standard at zoos and menageries in the nineteenth century, the chimpanzee entertainers of the twentieth century, and contemporary equivalents on the tube all project the image of animals doing their best to be like us, yet failing miserably. We get a kick out of such performances because our culture and dominant religion have tied human dignity and self-worth to our separation from nature and distinctness from other animals. Since we are the only ones who eat with cutlery-a sure sign of civilization-we are amused to see apes trying to do the same. They're not supposed to, and most certainly they're not supposed to be good at it. Lest the scene threaten the human ego, they must falter. As explained by Ramona and Desmond Morris:
In the late 1920s the London Zoo started to organize these demonstrations on a regular basis. Each afternoon at a set time a group of young chimpanzees performed at a table for the amusement of zoo visitors. They were trained to use bowls, plates, spoons, cups, and a tea pot. For the chimpanzee brain, learning to perform these trivial tasks provided only a minor challenge. There was the ever present danger that their table manners would become too polished. In order to relieve the monotony, it often became necessary to train them to "misbehave." They excelled at this, too, and their timing became so perfect that the tea cups were always popped into the teapot and the tea drunk through the spout, just at the vital moment when the keeper turned his back.2
To have apes ridicule our species, especially the cultural refinements that we admire so greatly in ourselves, could be looked at as a form of self-deprecation. That would be the optimistic view. The alternative is that by allowing animals to mock us we let them make even greater fools of themselves, which permits us to laugh away any doubts we might harbor about ourselves. That we select apes for this job is logical because it is particularly in the face of animals similar to us that human uniqueness needs confirmation.
To put this in perspective, imagine a family of elephants watching a television show in which people have hoses strapped to their noses and try to use the appendage to pick up a coin or uproot a small tree. The poor people in the show constantly get tangled up in their "trunks," trip over them, and in general demonstrate how ineptly unelephantine they are. I don't think we would find the show particularly funny, certainly not for longer than a couple of minutes, but an elephant family might never get enough of it.
This is because the issue is not humor, but self-definition.
Culture Versus Nature?
We define ourselves as the only cultured species, and we generally believe that culture has permitted us to break away from nature. We arc wont to say that culture is what makes us human. The sight of apes with wigs and sunglasses acting as if they have made the same step is therefore utterly incongruous. But what if apes have made this step to cultured behavior not only for the entertainment of the human masses, but also in real life without our assistance? What if they have their own culture rather than a superficially imposed human version? They might not be so amusing anymore. Indeed, even to contemplate such a possibility is bound to shake centuries-old convictions.
"They're getting restless. Okay boys, ham it up - knock the teapot over or something." (Cartoon of ape tea party at the zoo by Paul White, in 1962, reproduced with permission of Punch Ltd.)
The possiblility that animals have culture is the topic I wish to explore in this book. Although such an exploration is worthwhile for a number of reasons, two stand out. First, there is growing evidence for animal culture-most of it hidden in field notes and technical reports-that deserves to be more widely known. Before we can consider this material, however, we need to temporarily abandon a few cherished connotations of the term "culture." This term evokes images of art and classical music, symbols and language, and a heritage that needs protection against the mass-consumption society. A so-called cultured person has achieved a refinement of tastes, a welldeveloped intellect, and a particular set of values and moral principles. This is not how scientists use "culture" in relation to animals. Culture simply means that knowledge and habits are acquired from others-often, but not always, the older generation-which explains why two groups of the same species may behave differently. Because culture implies learning from others, we need to rule out that each individual has acquired a particu
lar trait by itself before we call it cultural.
The second reason for a book about animal culture is that it allows us to carry one more outdated Western dualism to its grave: the notion that human culture is the opposite of human nature. We in the West seem to have an uncontrollable urge to divide the world into two: good versus bad, us versus them, feminine versus masculine, learned versus innate, and so on. Dichotomies help organize our thinking, but they do so by neglecting complexities and shades of meaning. It is the rare thinker who keeps two contradictory thoughts simultaneously in mind; yet this is precisely what is often needed to get at the truth. Thus, while it is correct that learning affects all behavior, so does genetics, meaning that no behavior, whether human or animal, is dictated purely by one influence or the other.
In the last couple of years, the pendulum has swung away from nurture (or environmental effects) back to nature, leaving behind a number of bewildered social scientists who thought the issue had been settled. The current fascination with human biology, however, has created the opposite problem of people so obsessed with genetics that they ignore the other half of the equation. Twins-reared-apart studies have reached the status of common knowledge, and almost every week the media feature a new human gene. There is evidence for genes involved in schizophrenia, epilepsy, and Alzheimer's, and even in common behavioral traits such as thrill-seeking. Because genetic language ("a gene for x") plays into the hands of our sound-bite culture, we always need to add the warning that, by themselves, genes are like seeds dropped onto the pavement: in themselves they are powerless to produce anything. When scientists say that a trait is inherited, all they mean is that part of its variability is due to genetic factors. That the environment usually explains at least as much tends to be forgotten.
As Hans Kummer, a Swiss primatologist, remarked years ago, to try to determine how much of a trait is produced by genes and how much by the environment is as useless as asking whether the drum sounds that we hear in the distance are made by the percussionist or his instrument. On the other hand, if we pick tip a changed drum sound, we can legitimately ask whether the difference is due to another drummer or another drum.3 This is the only sort of question science addresses when it looks into genes versus the environment.
Culture is an environment that we create ourselves. For this reason, and quite contrary to the accepted view in some circles, culture does not deserve equal footing with nature. An entire generation of anthropologists has given this false impression by asking whether it is culture or nature that makes us act in a certain way. Natural selection, however, has produced our species, including our cultural abilities. Culture is part of human nature. To say that "man is made by culture," as many textbooks still do, is at the same level of accuracy as saying that "the river follows its bed." While true, the river also shapes its bed: the current river's flow is the product of the past river's action. In the same way, culture cannot exist apart from human nature, and there is profound circularity in saying that we are the product of culture if culture is the product of us.4
The relation between nature and culture reminds me of the mouse and the elephant walking side by side over a wooden bridge. Above the noise, the mouse shouts: "Hey, listen to us stamping together!" At the dawn of an undoubtedly Darwinian millennium, there are still those who claim that human behavior is mainly or entirely cultural. I see this exclusive focus like the mouse with delusions of grandeur walking next to human nature, the elephant who sets the tone of everything we do and are.
This is not to say that culture is mere icing on the cake, as some have suggested. Culture is an extremely powerful modifier-affecting everything we do and are, penetrating the core of human existence-but it can work only in conjunction with human nature. Culture takes human nature and bends it this way or that way, careful not to break it. That we have trouble looking through the false dichotomy is due to a peculiar uncertainty principle: we are unable to take off our cultural lenses, and hence can only guess at how the world would look without them. That is why we cannot discuss animal culture without seriously reflecting on our own culture and the possible blind spots it creates. Seemingly simple questions such as "Is there culture in nature?" and "Is there nature in culture?" cannot be answered without reflection on our own place in nature, a place that is culturally defined. I am not playing with words here. The only reason this sounds confusing is that we have been coaxed into treating nature and culture as opposites rather than closely intertwined.
Because of these larger issues, I find myself writing on topics on the margins of my expertise, from human goodness to Eastern philosophy, and from anthropomorphism to the aesthetic sense. Even if this is not the first time that I have stepped outside of my immediate field, which is to watch primates and prod them to give up their cognitive secrets, my task here is to discuss cultural biases, which makes me feel like a dog chasing its own tail, never really able to catch it. Moreover, one may question whether each culture fits in a little box: within cultures there is often plenty of disagreement. I often get the impression of being surrounded by two distinct categories of people: those who do and those who don't mind being compared with animals. I have encountered these contrasting attitudes among the great philosophers, among my teachers, and among friends and colleagues, and I have no idea what decides who will end up in which camp. It must have something to do with the empathy level towards animals, yet this just changes the question to why some people feel a connection with animals and others don't.
Around the World in Eighty Days
Part of my solution to the uncertainty principle has been to go places. If I cannot remove my cultural lenses, I can at least listen to people who grew up in other cultures. Thus, in the fall of 1998, I traveled around the world in eighty days. I went from Atlanta, where I live, to Austria, then China, Japan, Finland, and via the Netherlands, my native country, back to the United States. During this trip I researched several highly influential early students of human and animal behavior, such as the Austrian Konrad Lorenz, the Japanese Kinji Imanishi, and the Swedish-Finn Edward Westermarck. I debated monkeys and apes with colleagues in Japan, where cultural primatology found its origin. And most of all, I tried to weave together the three themes of this book: how we see other animals, how we see ourselves, and the nature of culture.
Each of these themes deserves a book of its own, but the special challenge of The Ape and the Sushi Master has been to freely move from one to the other, and from humans to other animals, while in the meantime poking a maximum number of holes in the nature/culture divide. In doing so, I have not striven for completeness, but picked issues that I felt best highlighted cultural biases in our treatment of nature, such as how noble or base we think our own species is, whether the bonobo's reception has been affected by how we judge its sexual morals, and how science goes about its business in the West and the East. These topics serve to illustrate how we selectively explore nature, sometimes shaping it in our own image.
My personal prejudices probably shine through, even though I may be less good at spotting them than some of my readers. I come from the southern part of the Netherlands. Since I was not born in the actual province of Holland, I rarely refer to my country by this name. The cruel hand of the Spanish Inquisition, which in the sixteenth century reached all the way to Flanders and my part of the Netherlands, put a halt to the Reformation that brought Calvinism to the North. The South stayed Roman Catholic, and as a result my upbringing instilled less fear of God's wrath than is typical of the rest of Northern Europe. We have street carnivals (not unlike those in New Orleans), and in general we pride ourselves on a certain joie de vivre.
Like all Dutch children of my generation, I was taught German, French, and English in addition to my own language, and I learned these languages so well that I still speak them fluently. Fluency comes from practice, and even though I kept repeating as a child that I would never need all those stupid languages (I was more interested in science and math), later in life I married a French
woman, moved to the United States, and began teaching and writing in English. It is hard to imagine anyone who has taken better advantage of his early language education!
The beauty of language is that each language is filled with concepts and expressions that reflect a distinct cultural outlook. Naturally, we try to translate these terms, but somehow the real flavor is only caught in the correct cultural and linguistic context. Words such as "date" or "cheerleader" may seem simple and obvious to Americans, but the concept of the-person-I-am-currently-going-out-with is unique to its culture (not to mention the idea of a "blind date"), and the mys tique surrounding cheerleading baffles every non-American. Similarly, French has a richer vocabulary for dishes, their taste, and their preparation than most non-Francophone people can even imagine, and the language brims with foodrelated expressions (such as "A kiss without moustache is like a soup without salt"). Every language captures a distinct way of looking at life, and no culture can ever be fully appreciated without an effort to speak the language.
As a European in America, one who crosses the Atlantic multiple times per year, I am very sensitive to the shades of value and meaning that go into making us the most cultural of cultural beings. I re-enter my Dutch persona when I am with my family, feel sort-of-French when visiting my in-laws in the Loire Valley, and after two decades in the upper Midwest and South, I am of course extensively familiar with the values, lifestyles, and cultural mix of the United States. So, even though this book may on occasion sound like an insult to the products of human culture, comparing them to the twigs and branches chimpanzees use in the jungle, I by no means want to trivialize how far we have come. I do wish to make the point, though, that culture must have had simple beginnings, some of which are to he found outside of our species.
The Ape And The Sushi Master Reflections Of A Primatologist Page 1