You should know as much as you can about the human species if you have a hand in designing human society. Of course, I'm not saying that you can derive moral rules from nature - that's deriving an ought from an is, as the philosophers say - but you do need to know what kind of animals we are if you want to design a stable society.

Empathy as a complex emotion is different. It requires awareness of the other person's feelings and of one's own reactions. The appropriate reaction may not be to cry when another person cries, but to reassure them, or even to leave them alone.

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.

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

The role of inequity in society is grossly underestimated. Inequity is not good for your health, basically.

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

The primate laugh is given in playful contexts, and as such has a strong similarity to the human laugh.