Home > Author > Frans de Waal
41 " Lo que interpretamos como un sentimiento de culpa en las personas a menudo es, igual que en los perros, una manera de evitar consecuencias negativas, más que la evidencia de una distinción profunda entre lo correcto y lo incorrecto. "
― Frans de Waal , Mama's Last Hug: Animal Emotions and What They Tell Us about Ourselves
42 " Nosotros evolucionamos a partir de comedores de fruta arborícolas - de ahí nuestros ojos frontales, nuestra visión de color y nuestras manos prensoras-, pero nuestro tamaño y nuestras aptitudes especiales nos confieren un porte depredador. Probablemente es por esto por lo que nos llevamos tan bien con nuestras mascotas favoritas, que son dos carnívoros peludos. "
43 " En nuestra especie, la atracción por la juventud tiene sentido debido a nuestro vínculo de pareja que conduce a familias estables. Las mujeres jóvenes están más disponibles y son más valiosas por la larga vida reproductiva que tienen por delante. De ahí el eterno anhelo femenino por parecer joven a base de bótox, implantes, estiramientos faciales y demás. "
44 " Todos los animales mutilan o matan a otros organismos. Ni el agricultor más orgánico puede evitar perjudicar los intereses de otras formas de vida al robar el hábitat de animales salvajes, erradicar insectos con pesticidas naturales y sacrificar plantas para el consumo humano. "
45 " La auténtica empatía humana no se centra en uno mismo, sino que se orienta en el otro. "
― Frans de Waal , Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?
46 " En vez de convertir a la humanidad en la medida de todas las cosas, tenemos que evaluar a las otras especies por lo que son ellas mismas. Al hacerlo, estoy seguro de que descubriremos muchos pozos mágicos, incluyendo algunos que por ahora están más allá de nuestra imaginación. "
47 " Behavior doesn't fossilize. This is why speculations about human prehistory are often based on what we know about other primates. Their behavior indicates the range of behavior our ancestors may have shown. "
― Frans de Waal , Our Inner Ape: A Leading Primatologist Explains Why We Are Who We Are
48 " The possibility that empathy is part of our primate heritage ought to makes us happy, but we're not in the habit of embracing our nature. When people commit genocide, we call them "animals". But when they give to the poor, we praise them for being "humane". We like to claim the latter behavior for ourselves. "
49 " Basándose en millones de años de evolución, las emociones -saben- cosas del entorno que nosotros como individuos no siempre conocemos de manera consciente. Por eso se dice que las emociones reflejan la sabiduría de las edades. "
50 " Para sobrevivir necesitamos comer, hacer el amor y criar. La naturaleza ha hecho que todas estas actividades nos resulten placenteras, de modo que nos entregamos a ellas con facilidad y de manera voluntaria. "
51 " The enemy of science is not religion... . The true enemy is the substitution of thought, reflection, and curiosity with dogma. "
― Frans de Waal
52 " Perhaps it's just me, but I am wary of any persons whose belief system is the only thing standing between them and repulsive behavior. "
― Frans de Waal , The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism Among the Primates
53 " We would much rather blame nature for what we don’t like in ourselves than credit it for what we do like. "
54 " Being both more systematically brutal than chimps and more empathetic than bonobos, we are by far the most bipolar ape. Our societies are never completely peaceful, never completely competitive, never ruled by sheer selfishness, and never perfectly moral. "
55 " So, don’t believe anyone who says that since nature is based on a struggle for life, we need to live like this as well. Many animals survive not by eliminating each other or keeping everything for themselves, but by cooperating and sharing. This applies most definitely to pack hunters, such as wolves or killer whales, but also to our closest relatives, the primates. "
― Frans de Waal , The Age of Empathy: Nature's Lessons for a Kinder Society
56 " humans are a strange lot. We have the power to analyze and explore the world around us, yet panic as soon as the evidence threatens to violate our expectations "
57 " Are we open-minded enough to assume that other species have a mental life? Are we creative enough to investigate it? Can we tease apart the roles of attention, motivation, and cognition? Those three are involved in everything animals do; hence poor performance can be explained by any one of them. "
58 " The key point is that anthropomorphism is not always as problematic as people think. To rail against it for the sake of scientific objectivity often hides a pre-Darwinian mindset, one uncomfortable with the notion of humans as animals. When we are considering species like the apes, which are aptly known as “anthropoids” (humanlike), however, anthropomorphism is in fact a logical choice. Dubbing an ape’s kiss “mouth-to-mouth contact” so as to avoid anthropomorphism deliberately obfuscates the meaning of the behavior. It would be like assigning Earth’s gravity a different name than the moon’s, just because we think Earth is special. "
59 " Robin Hood had it right.Humanity's deepest wish is to spread the wealth. "
60 " Those who exclaim that “animals are not people” tend to forget that, while true, it is equally true that people are animals. To minimize the complexity of animal behavior without doing the same for human behavior erects an artificial barrier. "