Chimpanzee Politics: Power and Sex among Apes (Paperback)

by Frans de Waal (Author) "CHIMPANZEES HAVE OUTSPOKEN PERSONALITIES..." (more)
Key Phrases: triadic awareness, separating interventions, bluff display, Two Power, Jane Goodall, Social Mechanisms (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
The great apes, like humans, can recognize themselves in mirrors. They communicate by sound and gesture, form bands along what can only be called political lines, and sometimes engage in what is very clearly organized warfare. (Less frequently, too, they practice cannibalism.) In Chimpanzee Politics Frans de Waal, a longtime student of simian behavior, analyzes the behavior of a captive tribe of chimpanzees, comparing its actions with those of ape societies in the wild. What he finds is often not pleasant: chimps seem capable of astonishing deviousness and savagery, which has obvious implications for the behavior their human cousins sometimes exhibit. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"Fascinating to read." -- Amelie Koehler, Ethology

"When I first read this book, I was in Dar es Salaam with Jane Goodall. I had just returned from observing chimpanzees for two weeks at Gombe. After the real life experience, I expected a book about chimpanzee behavior -- and at a zoo, at that -- to make rather dull reading. But I was in for a surprise. De Waal's Chimpanzee Politics is as much fun as a tree full of wild chimps." -- Adrienne Zihlman, American Journal of Primatology

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Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press; Revised edition (April 10, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0801863368
• ISBN-13: 978-0801863363
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.8 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #204,862 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars DISTURBING BUT USEFUL, May 23, 2006

By	C. Davis (Hanover, MD) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Chimpanzee Politics: Power and Sex among Apes was a very disturbing book to read. Perhaps this is because of the way Franz de Waal chose to end the book. The story about how Luit finished his reign as "alpha male" was extremely upsetting.

One of the key themes in the book is that so called political behavior is rooted at a level of development that is below cognitive and is as much instinctive as it is learned. Learning about the male chimpanzee's quest for dominance, it makes one wonder how much our behavior is motivated by inherent drives that are not only irrelevant in modern cultures, but are unknowable by those who experience the motivation.

This book has changed the way I look at and understand the word around me.

I strongly recommend this book, but it is not for the faint-hearted.

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Compelling observations, October 31, 2003

By	Debbie Lee Wesselmann (the Lehigh Valley, PA) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Chimpanzee Politics (Hardcover)

Frans de Waal is one of the most prominent primatologists writing about non-human primates today. Unlike Jane Goodall, who studies chimpanzees in the wild, de Waal observes captive chimp behavior at the Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center in Georgia. Although de Waal's strength lies in his ability to find echoes of human behavior in chimpanzee interactions (a stance that is still controversial in some circles), he is careful not to read absolutes into his observations. He is keenly aware that the species are not identical, only closely related.

CHIMPANZEE POLITICS begins by introducing the highly individualized personalities of the chimpanzees de Waal studied, and then progresses to specific examples of political behavior: power plays, diplomacy, perks at the various levels of the hierarchy, and the traits that give rise to this complicated chimpanzee social structure. Photographs, both black-and-white and color, serve to further document de Waal's observations. Although many people have made much of how this work illuminates human behavior, it is ultimately about chimps, not people.

This book was written for the layman, and its ease of reading makes it accessible to a wide range of readers. Highly readable and insightful, CHIMPANZEE POLITICS would make a strong addition to the libraries of those interested in the nature of primates, both human and non-human.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Recommended for lovers of nature and politics (human) alike, January 11, 2004

By	Alan Mills (Chicago, Illinois USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

DeWaal deftly narrates three changes in leadership among the colony of chimps in a zoo in the Netherlands (not Yerkes in GA, as another reviewer claims). Unlike many animals, chimpanzees can not dominate one another by use of brute force. No chimp is so strong that a coalition of two other males (or a coalition of females) can not successfully challenge his dominate position. This means that the dominate (male) chimp can only remain dominate if he succedes in coalition building.

Each of the "coups" DeWaal describes took place either because the dominate male became too greedy, or because another male built a stronger coalition. Similarly, the dominant make needs the cooperation (or at least neutrality) of most of the (more numerous, but weaker individually) females of the colony.

The comparison to human politics is right on the money. While chimpanzee politics does not have the veneer of ideology that covers the nitty gritty of human politics, I strongly suspect that the type of favors, distribution of goodies, and raw sex that DeWaal describes as the "currency" of chimpanzee politics is much closer to the way human politicians actually operate than most of us would like to admit.

If a Martian were to observe the functioning of the U.S. Sentate--without being able to understand a word anyone says, but with the ability to observe every transaction, day and night, over a period of sereral years, I suspect that the Martian's description of our politics would read very similarly to that of DeWaal's. Of course, for all we know, chimps too have a "language" which permits them to cover what appears to us to be raw politics with "political platforms".

One final note--the chimp need for coalitions to maintain primacy has obvious conotations for international relations in our world, where ideology plays less of a role, and coalitions have, at least since the end of WWII, been the key to maintaining a stable heirarchy of nations. Is the US now in danger of becoming the over confident "alpha" male that DeWaals describes?