Frans de Waal dies at 75; researcher explored the inner lives of apes

Frans de Waal was just starting his career in primate research in the mid-1970s when he watched a male chimpanzee aggressively confront another at a zoo enclosure in the Netherlands. Awhile later, the chimp calmed down and held his palm up, a gesture of reconciliation. The two chimps hugged.

The moment sparked a lifetime exploration, probing the inner lives of chimps, apes and other species for evidence of empathy, morality and sentient awareness — traits long assumed to exist at high levels only in humans. In other words, De Waal often said, we are not so special.

“I consider human cognition as a variety of animal cognition,” said De Waal, who died March 14 at 75 at his home in Stone Mountain, Ga. “We are exceptionally smart, but we are not fundamentally different.”

For more than five decades, De Waal was distinguished for his wide-ranging curiosity — from studying acts of altruism in chimps to questions of fluid gender roles in primates — as well as his storytelling flair.

In more than a dozen books and frequent talks around the world, De Waal shared anecdotes and his deadpan humor (often mocking ideas of human exceptionalism) while bringing his work to a wide audience.

“I hate the so-called ‘ivory tower’ of science and feel that I have an obligation to communicate with the general public,” said De Waal, a longtime professor of psychobiology at Emory University in Atlanta and a research scientist at the school’s Yerkes National Primate Research Center (now the Emory National Primate Research Center.)

One of De Waal’s favorite tales was about Kuni, a bonobo, a primate found in central Africa. A bird slammed into the walls of her glass enclosure at a British zoo. Kuni gently picked up the stunned bird and took it to the top of the tallest tree in her habitat. She unfolded the bird’s wings and set it loose, like a toy airplane. The bird was still too disoriented, and Kuni watched over it for hours until it could fly away.

“[Kuni] tailored her assistance to the specific situation of an animal totally different from herself,” De Waal wrote in his 2005 book, “Our Inner Ape.”

In other books and lectures, he described problem-solving such as two chimpanzees joining forces to lug a heavy box or signs of apparent compassion with male chimps taking over care for the young when females were absent. He helped popularize the term “alpha male” in primate terms — not as a swaggering victor but as a leader who shows care and wise judgment for the entire group.

An example was how a group of bonobos helped an ailing newcomer named Kidogo adjust to a new zoo setting. “[They] took him by the hand and led him to where the keepers wanted him, thus showing they understood both the keepers’ intentions and Kidogo’s problem,” he wrote.

De Waal stressed that such behaviors should not be viewed as just simple versions of human interactions. Instead, he said, they should be regarded as a different, but equally rich, array of emotions and social learning that includes passing on knowledge and sharing a sense of community and generational continuity.

“The possibility that empathy is part of our primate heritage ought to make us happy, but we are not in the habit of taking pride in our nature,” he wrote in a 2005 essay in New Scientist.