Male chimpanzees have an extraordinarily strong drive for dominance. They're constantly jockeying for position.

The enemy of science is not religion... . The true enemy is the substitution of thought, reflection, and curiosity with dogma.

I've argued that many of what philosophers call moral sentiments can be seen in other species. In chimpanzees and other animals, you see examples of sympathy, empathy, reciprocity, a willingness to follow social rules. Dogs are a good example of a species that have and obey social rules; that's why we like them so much, even though they're large carnivores.

Humans became easy prey when they moved from the forest to the savanna, which deprived them of the option of climbing trees to flee predators. This shift made it necessary for the men to actively protect the women and their babies. Only as a result of this protection were women able to give birth in shorter intervals, perhaps once every two or three years. This meant that they could produce offspring about twice as frequently as apes. I would be willing to bet that this rapid reproduction is one of the reasons why we dominate the world today, and not the apes.

We are territorial, power-hungry and even more brutal than chimpanzees.

Exclusive homosexuality is not very common in nature.

The possibility that empathy resides in parts of the brain so ancient that we share them with rats should give pause to anyone comparing politicians with those poor, underestimated creatures.