A chimpanzee who is really gearing up for a fight doesn't waste time with gestures but just goes ahead and attacks.

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

Armies are a purely human invention. Most soldiers who go to war nowadays don't even do it because they're inherently aggressive.

I call the notion that we are nothing but killer apes the Beethoven fallacy. Beethoven was disorganized and messy, and yet his music is the epitome of order.

We start out postulating sharp boundaries, such as between humans and apes, or between apes and monkeys, but are in fact dealing with sand castles that lose much of their structure when the sea of knowledge washes over them. They turn into hills, leveled ever more, until we are back to where evolutionary theory always leads us: a gently sloping beach.

If you want to design a successful human society you need to know what kind of animal we are. Are we a social animal or a selfish animal? Do we respond better when we're solitary or living in a group?

When it comes to social interaction, the chimpanzees appear to be just as intelligent as we are.