The Age of Empathy by Frans de Waal Read Free Book Online

with moral obligations. She reached millions of enthusiastic readers with her message that egoism is no vice, but rather a virtue. She turned the whole issue upside down, devoting thousand-page novels to the notion that if we have any obligation at all, it is to ourselves. Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan considers Rand a major influence on his life and work.
    Insofar as such arguments are based on what is supposedly natural, however, they are fundamentally flawed. In Spencer’s days, this was exposed by the unlikely character of a Russian prince, Petr Kropotkin. Though a bearded anarchist, Kropotkin was also a naturalist of great distinction. In his 1902 book,
Mutual Aid,
he argued that the struggle for existence is not so much one of each against all, but of masses of organisms against a hostile environment. Cooperation is common, such as when wild horses or musk oxen form a ring around their young to protect them against attacking wolves.
    Kropotkin was inspired by a setting quite unlike the one that had inspired Darwin. Darwin visited tropical regions with abundantwildlife, whereas Kropotkin explored Siberia. The ideas of both men reflect the difference between a rich environment, resulting in the sort of population density and competition envisioned by Malthus, and an environment that is frozen and unfriendly most of the time. Having witnessed climatic calamities in which horses were scattered by the wind and herds of cattle perished under piles of snow, Kropotkin objected to the depiction of life as a “gladiator’s show.” Instead of animals duking it out, and the victors running off with the prize, he saw a communal principle at work. In subzero cold, you either huddle together or die.

    A horned wall of adult musk oxen faces predators, such as wolves.
    Mutual aid has become a standard ingredient of modern evolutionary theories, albeit not exactly in the way Kropotkin formulated it. Like Darwin, he believed that cooperative groups of animals (or humans) would outperform less cooperative ones. In other words, the ability to function in a group and build a support network is a crucial survival skill. The importance of such skills for primates was confirmed by a recent baboon study on the Kenyan plains: Females with the best social ties were shown to have the most surviving infants. Grooming partners protect each other from outside aggression, send shrill warning calls to each other when they spot a predator, and provide soothing contact. All of this helps baboon mothers raise offspring.
    I myself knew two inseparable female macaques named Ropey and Beatle. They were approximately the same age, and at first I thought they were sisters, because they did everything together, groomed eachother, and gave friendly lip smacks to each other’s babies. They also helped each other in fights, so much so that Beatle (who ranked below Ropey) would scream and look at her friend every time another monkey dared to threaten her. Everyone in the group knew that they would have to deal with both of them. According to our records, however, Ropey and Beatle were unrelated.
    Theirs was just one of those trusting alliances that monkeys develop to get ahead. All primates have this tendency, and some even invest in the community as a whole. Instead of just focusing on their own position, they demonstrate group-oriented behavior. This is most evident in relation to social harmony. For example, Chinese golden monkeys live in harems of one male with several females. The male is much larger than the females and has a beautiful thick coat of orange hair. When his females quarrel, he positions himself between them until they stop, while calming tempers by turning from one to the other with a friendly facial expression or by combing the hair on each female’s back with his fingers.
    In chimpanzees, both males and females actively broker community relations. In a large zoo colony that I studied, females would occasionally disarm