" Within a decade, both individual identification and food provisioning were adopted at Western field sites, from Gombe Stream to Cayo Santiago. And even though the second part of the method has fallen out of favor, the first remains firmly embedded. The concept of the individual in its society amounts to a momentous theoretical contribution by Japanese primatology to the study of social animals. The ideas that individuals matter, that their identities are linked to their place in the whole, that they need to be followed over time, and that human empathy helps us understand them, are so obviously correct that armies of scientists now apply this perspective, often without knowing where it came from. "

― Frans de Waal , The Ape and the Sushi Master: Reflections of a Primatologist