Primate Socialization Quotes

If you spend enough time around something like baboons, you start to look at humans differently.

If a male primate is mean to a female primate, her whole family will come after him. We don't have that sort of accountability in industrial societies.

Chimps are very quick to have a sudden fight or aggressive episode, but they're equally as good at reconciliation.

I'm in the role of helping these apes negotiate the human role. I'm just a temporary intermediary in what I think will be eventual communication between the two species.

Non-human primates spend hours a day grooming each other. And with humans, touching is also important. It's a way to form bonds and connect in modern society. But you can also speed up the use of conscious purposes once you're aware of that, and it can be manipulated.

When you're dealing with monkeys, you've got to expect some wrenches.

Humans socialize in the largest groups of all primates because we are the only animals with brains large enough to handle the complexities of that social arrangement.

On the day-long follows that I used to do with mothers and their offspring - these chimp families that I knew so well - there was hardly a day when I didn't learn something new about them.