Frans de Waal is gone

Frans de Waal has died. Among his smaller accomplishments was winning an Ig Nobel Prize in 2012, with colleague Jennifer Pokorny, for discovering that chimpanzees can identify other chimpanzees individually from seeing photographs of their rear ends. [The photo you see here shows them giving their acceptance speech at the Ig Nobel ceremony at Harvard University.]

The Dutch newspaper NRC reports the sad news (and goes on, to describe some of de Waal’s imaginative, often-colorful research):

The man who brought humans and monkeys together

Frans de Waal died on Thursday evening US time at the age of 75 in his hometown of Atlanta, Georgia (USA), as a result of metastatic stomach cancer, his family confirmed.

De Waal was the most famous Dutch primatologist for decades. With his calm speech, great knowledge and undeniable love for our fellow animals, he was also a well-known figure outside of science. Often shown on television, often quoted in debates.

De Waal rose to fame in the 1980s with his book Chimpanzee Politics (1982). This book was based on his observations of the power struggle in the chimpanzee colony of Burgers Zoo in Arnhem. The book offers a radical new view of ape leadership: it is not brute force and the direct application of power, but rather the mediation of conflicts and careful management of alliances that characterize the life of an ape leader. The monkey world suddenly became very human. So humane that conservative Republican Senator Newt Gingrich recommended the book in the 1990s as educational reading for young members of Congress.

This is a common thread in De Waal’s work: apes are much more like humans, and humans are much more like apes, than we think. As he said in a speech about his work in 2014: “I have moved the monkeys up a little and the people down a little.” …