Chimpanzee Politics: Power and Sex among Apes | 
| Author: Frans De Waal
Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  17 reviews
Sales Rank: 198618
Media: Paperback
Edition: 25th anniversary
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 256
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9.7 x 6.8 x 0.8
ISBN: 0801886562
Dewey Decimal Number: 599.885
EAN: 9780801886560
ASIN: 0801886562
Publication Date: August 30, 2007
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Amazon.com
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.
Product Description
The first edition of Frans de Waal's Chimpanzee Politics was acclaimed not only by primatologists for its scientific achievement but also by politicians, business leaders, and social psychologists for its remarkable insights into the most basic human needs and behaviors. Twenty-five years later, this book is considered a classic. Featuring a new preface that includes recent insights from the author, this anniversary edition is a detailed and thoroughly engrossing account of rivalries and coalitions -- actions governed by intelligence rather than instinct. As we watch the chimpanzees of Arnhem behave in ways we recognize from Machiavelli (and from the nightly news), de Waal reminds us again that the roots of politics are older than humanity.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 12 more reviews...
 A Fascinating Read March 29, 2008
I was hesitant to purchase this book because I thought it was pricey. Let me tell you, it was worth every penny. This good quality paperback is filled with terrific photos and lots of references. Frans de Waal's documentation of the behavior of the Chimps of Arnhem is hilarious and horrifying. I couldn't put it down!
 An excellent update January 8, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
In the year I was born the Dutch primatologist Frans de Waal delivered a highly popular and influential book about the chimpanzees of Arnhem Zoo, the Netherland facility housing the largest captive population of the apes in the world. At first such a book might not have seemed so exciting, the well-known studies of Jane Goodall or Diane Fossey among apes in Africa making a group of chimpanzees in a zoo seem bland by comparison, but de Waal took advantage of the opportunities for detailed observation the captive setting provided and painted a vivid picture of the complex social life of chimpanzees in Chimpanzee Politics. Twenty-five years after its first publication, the book has recently been updated with new information about the chimpanzees of Arnhem and a selection of color photographs, the supplemental materials adding to what was already an excellent book.
The true strength of Chimpanzee Politics lies in de Waal's ability to guide the reader step-by-step through the complex social interactions of the chimpanzees, the story of the various dominance shifts and reconciliations being fairly easy to follow. Even when some of the interactions become a little confusing, the book includes a smattering of diagrams that help to show how the groups feelings toward a certain member oscillated back and forth over time, for example. These are especially helpful as de Waal shows that while physical strength or the ability to beat another chimpanzee in a one-to-one confrontation is important, coalitions and support from other members of the group can make or break dominance hierarchies in ways that we might not expect. Indeed, the males Luit, Nikki, and Yeroen are the main "characters" of this tale, each having their time at the top (but only through cooperation and coalitions). Ultimately, as reported by de Waal in the paper "The Brutal Elimination of a Rival Among Captive Male Chimpanzees" published in 1986, Luit was fatally injured by Nikki and Yeroen, a fact that is included in the epilouge as de Waal admits he did not want to initially end his book on a dark note.
The power shifts between the three males don't make sense without an understanding of the females in the group, however, and de Waal does spend some time describing the behaviors and social habits of the females. A little more explanation and detail in this area would have strengthened the book, especially since female chimpanzees in the wild disperse from their home populations and are not constantly in close contact with each other, but de Waal does spend some time talking about the rough time the male chimpanzees received when introduced to the group when it was dominated by a female named Mama. Eventually the males achieved dominance, but even so they still relied on the support of females during the periods when one male was on his way to displacing the dominant male as the alpha, so females are not merely relegated to the objects of the males sexual desires and nothing else. In fact, the younger sexually-mature females were sometimes so amorous that they "wore out" the adult males, the interactions between the sexes being just as compelling as the chapters featuring power struggles.
Given the close resemblances, both physical and social, between chimpanzees and our own species it is easy to draw comparisons between the two, but de Waal remains careful not to extend his observations of chimpanzees too far. Even when his writings might land on the anthropomorphic side of the fence, de Waal usually admits that he is doing so up front. Indeed, de Waal's unapologetic attitude for attributing names and personalities to each animal and up-front honesty in making the occasional comparison to human behavior makes Chimpanzee Politics a refreshing read, de Waal overcoming preconceptions that captive chimpanzees are not worth the time spent studying them. While it was right on-time to signal a changing view of primatology when it was first published, Chimpanzee Politics is just as fresh and thought-provoking in 2008 as it was in 1983.
An exciting if not compelling Study October 15, 2007
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Frans De Waal, a Primatologist of some considerable note, in this exciting report on his most recent research, gives us an insider's view of the social "goings on" within a tribe of Chimps. His research model might be described as a Machiavellian-based political model, one he fashions loosely into a framework for understanding and interpreting the meanings implicit in chimp sexual and political behavior, behavior that De Waal observed in a zoo context and recorded for the better part of seven years.
The author discerns definite hierarchical patterns to Chimp behavior, along lines common across the animal kingdom -- especially as regards to how alpha males dominate and sustain their power at the top of their respective social hierarchies. De Waal shows that unlike larger primates, because of their smallness of size, ruling chimp culture requires (almost as a political imperative) that alpha males build coalitions from among the ranks of secondary males and females if they hope to sustain their dominance at the top of the hierarchy for any length of time.
The author vividly walks us thorough several power struggles in which alpha males are replaced. Each of these replacements or "coups" took place either because the dominant male became too greedy, too relaxed in his caolition-building or leadership, or because another male built sounder more enduring and robust coalitions and used them to move against the incumbent.
Making the necessary Freudian extrapolations, one is likely to see in the deeper outlines of these power struggles a remarkable resemblance to similar dramas witnessed everyday in the human political arena. For instance, it take little imagination to guess that Chimp political and sexual behavior is not only Machiavellian in its basic character, but perhaps also Darwinian in its form -- that is to say it is Darwinian in the Sociobiologist's sense of being instinctively driven well beneath cognition. However, it is probably sounder and safer to speculate that such behavior is being driven at the level of "proto-Chimp culture" and socialization rather than at the level of genes.
In any case, even though it is wise not to read too much into these similarities, I nevertheless believe that in the final analysis it is brain architecture that drives these similarities home. Man does not always want to account for, nor take full responsibility for, the behavioral remnants of his reptilian brain. As a result we live within a self-made delusional bubble made up of layers of self-righteous beliefs and denials, noble ideals and values, all couched in an ideology of self-preservation. This unconscious super-structure is piled atop our reptilian brain masquerading at the conscious level as a much more evolved and complex form of civilized animal than it really is.
I thus share the view of other reviewers that another way to see this is just as another layer super-imposed on top of the more honest chimp model. To the extent this interpretation is valid, it does raise interesting if not frighteningly close similarities about what normally goes disguised as ordinary human sexual and political behavior.
Drawing conclusions about human behavior based on an already human inspired model being applied to chimp political processes, runs dangerously close to introducing a closed theoretical system, in effect a theoretical tautology. It seems clear that the behavior described in this study -- even if viewed only across the rest of the ape family -- shows remarkable variations. To close this circle completely and begin drawing additional conclusions about human based on a single de Waal's study, would be unwarranted, theoretically questionable and slightly more than just a bit irresponsible.
Nevertheless, I put this work in the same class as Wright's "Moral Animal." There are certainly cross-cutting and reinforcing conclusions to be drawn as a result of this research. Five stars
DISTURBING BUT USEFUL May 23, 2006
10 out of 10 found this review helpful
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.
 Lots about Chimpazee Erections April 6, 2006
3 out of 11 found this review helpful
De Waal investigates chimpanzee behavior in a zoo, which is at odds with chimpanzee behavior in the wild. The main difference is that the female chimps live together instead of foraging alone, which leads them to participate more in politics than usual. The book is about coalitions, how they're formed, and between whom. The longest part details how leadership changed from chimp to chimp to chimp. There is quite a bit about chimpanzee sex, especially how male chimps thrusts their hips forward and bounce their penises up and down to attract women. There is a nude shot of a chimpanzee penis, but you have to be told what it is. There is a lesbian monkey, and an ape rape, and they go together. A big arrow would have been helpful. The very best part is the postscript which depicts something that is treated fully in another book (de Waal is a salesman as well as a biologist); one of the chimps is murdered when the other chimps bite off his balls. It has some good pictures, it's kind of fun, but I wouldn't buy it.
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