Mark Shand Quotes

Baboons are poster children for psychosocial stress, living in troops with bruising and shifting dominance hierarchies among males and high rates of male aggression.

Even in civilized mankind faint traces of monogamous instinct can be perceived.

Theyre not group animals, theyre completely solitary, so if the babys mother is taken away, theres no system of aunts ... their whole system is destroyed.

We, as a people, we have a strong need to categorize everything. We put labels on everything and it's a totally understandable need because we are animals and we need to understand order and where to fit in.

Life histories tell you just about everything you need to know about an animal.

Elephants are contagious.

You have to check out 'March of the Penguins'. Penguins are the really ideal example of monogamy.

Our society is not a community, but merely a collection of isolated family units.

A lion is not a lion is not a lion. As individuals, as mates, as members of a society, they're all very different.

Following rules is, of course, the reason the dog is man's best friend is because the dog follows rules, and they actually do experiments on that, is that how well certain breeds of dogs follow rules, and how much they internalize them. And so many hierarchical animals, obviously they follow rules.

The metaphor of the king as the shepherd of his people goes back to ancient Egypt. Perhaps the use of this particular convention is due to the fact that, being stupid, affectionate, gregarious, and easily stampeded, the societies formed by sheep are most like human ones.

Without civilization, we would not turn into animals, but vegetables.

I don't know where I learned elephants like their tongues slapped. Whatever turns you on.

Ants have the most complicated social organization on earth next to humans.

The work on ants has profoundly affected the way I think about humans.

The ant world is a tumult, a noisy world of pheromones being passed back and forth.

Hillary Clinton famously talked about how raising a child takes a village. Except our society isn't set up that way. We're organized in nuclear units, and a single mom can ask her friends only so many times for help picking up the kids.

Eagles fly alone, but sheep flock together.

I expected social rank to be the determining factor in health, and in some ways that's true. But far more important is what sort of society that rank occurs in. Being low ranking in a benevolent troop is a hell of a lot better for your blood pressure than being low ranking in an aggressive troop.

I always thought of deer as solitary animals that weren't very interesting. But my goodness, that was very wrong. The big eye-opener for me was that they're social. They have family groups.

We can learn a great deal from whales. It is the same lesson we can learn from our close genetic relatives, the bonobo apes of the Congo. Here mothers have a great deal of authority, there is very little violence (with no signs of sexual violence against females), and their society is held together by sharing and caring rather than by fear and force.

A man must be clothed with society, or we shall feel a certain bareness and poverty, as of a displaced and unfurnished member. He is to be dressed in arts and institutions, as well as in body garments. Now and then a man exquisitely made can live alone, and must; but coop up most men and you undo them.

Elephants are so wise and so funny and so endangered and so intelligent. I just think there is a lot to learn from them.

I worked next to an elephant. And considering that she could step on your toes, it's a good idea to keep a certain distance. It's also a good idea to befriend the trainer.

Birds do it, bees do it, even educated fleas do it; let's do it, let's fall in love.