THE APE AND THE SUSHI MASTER Cultural Reflections by a Primatologist Frans de Waal Basic Books 2001 TABLE OF CONTENTS Prologue: The Apes' Tea Party 1 Section 1 Cultural Glasses: The Way We See Other Animals 35 1 The Whole Animal: Childhood Talismans and Excessive Fear of Anthropomorphism 37 2 The Fate of Gurus: When Silverbacks Become Stumbling Blocks 85 3 Bonobos and Fig Leaves: Primate Hippies in a Puritan Landscape 127 4 Animal Art: Would You Hang a Congo on the Wall? 149 Section 2 What Is Culture, and Does It Exist in Nature? 177 5 Predicting Mount Fiji, and a Visit to Koshima, Where the Monkeys Salt Their Potatoes 179 6 The Last Rubicon: Can Other Animals Have Culture? 213 7 The Nutcracker Suite: Reliance on Culture in Nature 239 8 Cultural Naturals: Tea and Tibetan Macaques 273 Section 3 Human Nature: The Way We See Ourselves 295 9 Apes with Self-Esteem: Abraham Maslow and the Taboo on Power 297 10 Survival of the Kindest: Of Selfish Genes and Unselfish Dogs 315 11 Down with Dualism! Two Millenia of Debate About Human Goodness 337 Epilogue: The Squirrel's Jump 359 Notes 365 Bibliography 389 Acknowledgements 407 Index 411 The Ape and the Sushi Master challenges our most basic assumptions about who we are and how we differ from other animals. In a delightful mix of autobiographical anecdote, rigorous research, and speculation, eminent primatologist Frans de Waal leads us to consider the possibility that apes have their own culture. We think that only we humans are culturally free and sophisticated, varying our behavior from group to group. But what if apes react to situations with behavior learned through observation of their elders (culture) rather than through pure genetic instinct (nature)? Such a scenario shakes our centuries-old convictions about what makes humans distinct. It also counters our recent tendency to look at other animals as slaves of their genetic programs: if animals learn from each other the way we do, this brings them much closer to us. De Waal corrects the assumption that humans are the only form of intelligent life to have made the leap from the natural to the cultural. The book's title derives from an analogy he draws between the way behavior is transmitted in ape society and the way sushi-making skills are passed down from the sushi master to his apprentice through careful observation. At the same time that he explores the specifics of social transmission, however, de Waal tackles the bigger issue of how our own human culture affects the way we look at other animals, and how what we know about animals reflects back on us. In doing so, he explores the influence of European ethology and Japanese primatology on the way we think about animal behavior. The question of animal culture is culturally loaded, and it can be no accident that the impetus for cultural studies of animals came from the East, which has less of a tendency to set humans apart from nature. Apes are holding a mirror up to us in which they are not human caricatures, but members of our extended family with their own resourcefulness and dignity. Ever since Carl Linnaeus courageously classified us with the monkeys and apes, in 1758, we have known that we are not alone. Biologically speaking, we never were, and in The Ape and the Sushi Master, de Waal makes the equally startling claim that the same is true when it comes to culture. Frans de Waal, one of the world's leading primate behavior experts, is the C.H. Candler Professor of Primate Behavior at Emory University and Director of the Living Links Center, a center for the advanced study of ape and human evolution. The Dutch-born zoologist and ethologist is the author of Chimpanzee Politics, Peacemaking Among Primates, Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals, and Bonobo: The Forgotten Ape. He lives in Atlanta, GA. WHERE TO ORDER: Perseus Books Group Customer Service Department 5500 Central Avenue Boulder, CO 80301 Phone: (800) 386-5656 Fax: (303) 449-3356 Email: westview.orders@perseusbooks.com Web Site: www.basicbooks.com Price: $26 (ISBN: 0465041752)
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