Humanity is actually much more cooperative and empathic than [it's] given credit for.

Wild groups of chimpanzees attack their enemies like gangs. What they completely lack, precisely because of their strong territorial behavior, is a friendly relationship with their neighbors.

Humans have a lot of pro-social tendencies.

In humans, the family prevents infanticide. Next to language, the core family, consisting of a mother, a father and children, is the greatest difference between us and other primates.

The more self-aware an animal is, the more empathetic it tends to be.

We justify the inequalities by saying some people are just better and smarter than others and the strong should survive and the poor can die off.

Popular culture bombards us with examples of animals being humanized for all sorts of purposes, ranging from education to entertainment to satire to propaganda. Walt Disney, for example, made us forget that Mickey is a mouse, and Donald a duck. George Orwell laid a cover of human societal ills over a population of livestock.