The ape in the mirror

In 1960, in the forests of Tanzania, against the backdrop of humanity’s existential century, primatologist Jane Goodall took a proverbial jackhammer to the definition of what it means to be human. For decades after the discovery of evolution, humanity was separated from all other animals, even the apes we now know to be our closest relatives: the great apes of Africa and Indonesia. During this period, we were alone in the scientific family of Hominidae. With our evolutionary self-awareness, we defined ourselves as “that primate who habitually uses tools” — to create cities, feed ourselves and, eventually, to create weapons that could so easily wipe away our own civilizations. We were special; we alone had dominated the resources of our planet. But on a quiet morning near a termite hill, Goodall witnessed a chimpanzee strip the leaves from a piece of straw, stick it into a hole and remove it, covered in termites, for his meal.

Upon hearing the news, Goodall’s mentor, Louis Leaky, prophesied the succeeding six decades of primatology: “Now we must redefine ‘tool,’ redefine ‘man,’ or accept chimpanzees as human.”

The choice was to redefine man. But even then, for 60 years, we continued to find evidence disproving our assumed superiority. Domains of human exceptionalism we had taken for granted fell in the face of continued observation: war, hunting, meat-eating and fairness, among others. By the time the chimpanzee and bonobo genomes were fully mapped, we already knew that many of our behaviors were in one way or another mirrored by the other great ape species. The final nail in the coffin was genetic: 98% of our DNA is shared with both chimpanzees and bonobos.

Alas, I am no primatologist. My expertise comes from writing and history, not scientific research or first-hand accounts. Still, there’s something to be said about our connection to these great apes, from whom we kept ourselves apart for so long. Prior to these discoveries, we labeled ourselves, the homosapien, as Hominidae. The other great apes — chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and orangutans — were their own evolutionary family: the Pongidae. Why did we exclude ourselves from them, despite our similarities? What does this say about what it means to be human and how we’ve treated each other? Is our dichotomous nature, cruelty and kindness, unique to ourselves? What are we to do with our cousins?

To learn more about the differences and similarities between ourselves and the great apes, I spoke with primatologist John Mitani, professor emeritus of anthropology, who has studied chimpanzees for decades. The first thing he stressed was that, despite any behavioral similarities, we are fundamentally different from the other great apes.

“We have this big brain, and we do obvious things with our big brains that are different from the great apes,” Mitani said. “One of the things we do is we develop all these wondrous things through our cultural capabilities. That’s not to say that apes aren’t cultural beings, but we just have a proclivity of learning things from others in ways that other animals simply don’t.”

Is that our answer? That despite all of our behavioral similarities, we are different solely because we have culture? In the course of our conversation, Mitani pointed out that ape communities do have cultural traditions, whether it be in their social behaviors or the different ways in which they make tools. No, they don’t have organized religion, but they do have spiritual customs. No, they haven’t created the nation-state, but they split into distinct communities that clash and communicate.

It seems unlikely that these communities operate in a different way than a lion’s pride or elephant seal’s haram, where an alpha holds the group together out of dominance and respect. If there is anything unique to humans, it is that our animalistic, prosocial tendencies seem to operate on 80 tons of steroids. Not only do we work together to solve problems, but we meet with complete strangers, as I did with Mitani. Through the power of language, we can organize thousands of people to build a pyramid or a few dozen to call for help in an emergency. These tendencies even allow us to sit on a crowded plane for hours on end, resisting the urge to murder the seat neighbor hogging the armrest. 

“Imagine what happens when you get on a plane,” Mitani suggested. “You get on this little tin structure with a bunch of strangers you have never met in your life and you get out on the other end okay. Now imagine putting a bunch of chimps together in that same situation; at the end of the trip, you’re not going to have anybody who’s going to emerge alive.”

***

The Europeans first encountered great apes through their early efforts at colonization. The Dutch were the first to encounter one of the cousins of humanity, bringing back orangutans from their expeditions in Indonesia. Much of Europe’s initial understanding of apes came from local folklore; the Dutch accepted the Malay claims that orangutans could speak, but that they chose not to, and that they mated with human women. For a few years, the word orangutan, meaning forest person, was used to refer to all ape species encountered on European voyages.

The Enlightenment thinkers of the time responded to this new discovery with interest. After being put on display for the general public, physicians and scientists would dissect the orangutans and chimpanzees brought before them, learning all they could about our anatomical similarities. Though labeled as monsters, these primates were regarded with interest and were lauded for their similarities to humans. Natural “histories” claimed that orangutans and chimpanzees walked upright, lived in societies deep in the woods and could use civilized tools, such as blankets and cups. In effect, they were simply regarded as wild men.

Although the Dutch brought apes back through their extensive trade networks, the first chimpanzee in England arrived on a slave ship. As the leading thinkers of the time attempted to reason with the original iteration of Leaky’s dilemma — they, too, chose to redefine man — the United Kingdom was undergoing a process of ending slavery on the home islands. That the British’s first introduction to non-human apes came in the context of one of the last slave ships to land in England is telling of the contemporary debates that would shape our understanding of humanity. In response to Joseph Knight, a Scottish slave suing for his freedom, Scottish philosopher Lord Monboddo pointed to the newly found great apes as evidence against the civilization of Africans.

Monboddo argued, radically, that chimpanzees were human. He saw them as sharing enough characteristics with ourselves that the boundaries of man ought to be redrawn to include their numbers. On the other hand, he didn’t argue that they were civilized. He placed them on the outer edge of the definition, labeling them as savages who were capable of beginning the process to a Eurocentric view of civilization. And who else joined apes on the outer edges of humanity? Those who he defined as only being fit for slavery: Africans.

Here we find the origins of our collective fears: fear of domination, fear of the unbound wild … fear of being savage. The concept of dehumanization only exists in a world where we separate ourselves from animals. If we were not born separate from nature, destined to subjugate the earth, then defining someone as less than human would not raise the same sinister question of genocide, enslavement and cruelty as it does in this reality. By expanding the definition of humanity to encompass apes, Monboddo was controlling what he viewed as an inevitable truth: yes, these people seem to be human, and we can call them such, but they are still savages and less than civilized.

In the original Planet of the Apes series “Conquest of the Planet of the Apes,” the allegory of real chattel slavery is less than obvious. In a world ravaged by disease, the intelligent apes are held in chains and forced to work under the barrel of a gun. In the end, when the chains have been broken, the apes ask their oppressor, General Breck, why he had forced them into subjugation.

“Your kind were once our ancestors,” Breck said. “Because man was born of apes, and there’s still an ape curled up inside of every man. You’re the beast in us that we have to whip into submission. You’re the savage that we need to shackle in chains. You taint us, Caesar. You poison our guts. When we hate you, we’re hating the dark side of ourselves.”

***

Our modern understanding of evolution makes much of the Enlightenment era’s conceptions moot. No, apes cannot speak. They don’t kidnap human women — as much as King Kong will have you believe it — and they are firmly not human. Breck, in his ’70s, scientific-fiction theory of evolution, was also wrong. We did not descend from apes, but rather, we share a common ancestor. 

Alongside chimpanzees are bonobos, our second most closely related relative. If chimpanzees represent the more violent aspects of human nature — immensely territorial, going so far as to kill rival communities — then bonobos represent the best parts of human nature. Mitani suggested that bonobos disprove human aggression as an evolutionary trait we share with other apes.

“You can make an argument perhaps that we share this violent history with chimpanzees, and because of that the roots of our aggression are rooted way back in our evolutionary history,” Mitani said. “But that conveniently ignores that we share this ancestry with bonobos, who don’t seem to be acting in the same way as chimpanzees.”

Among the bonobo traits that are so different from their non-human cousins is a strong prosocial tendency. Rather than settling conflicts through violence or intimidation, they maintain strong social bonds through frequent sex. They do it so much, in fact, that sex among bonobos — which is not limited to heterosexual pairings — is not linked to procreation but to a relieving of tension. When multiple groups of bonobos come together, they also seem to form temporary communities, in contrast to Chimpanzees.

“From time to time, members of different Bonobo groups, when they come together, instead of beating each other up, they’ll just sort of hang out and move around with each other for days on end,” Mitani said. “That’s been a revelation that has been quite surprising.”

***

Now that we’ve bounced to a few different places, I’d like to ground you again in the central question of this piece: what are you, and what are apes? 

Despite the massive differences in the size of our brains, we share many behavioral tendencies with chimpanzees and bonobos, as well as gorillas and orangutans. Did you think that you were alone in figuring out how to solve a puzzle or use a tool you found in the garage? Apes do that too. Strong prosocial connections? Apes have those, too. If you found yourself feeling unique in your answers to the 2023 Statement Sex Survey, odds are that the bonobos are beating you to it. 

We are not a unique creation placed here on this Earth by divine intervention. When Breck said that mankind was born of apes — and that there is still an ape curled inside every man — he was right. There is a figurative ape inside each and every one of us, not because we’ve evolved past our animal origins, but because we ourselves are animals. When I talk of the great apes, I don’t mean to exclude humans from that label either; we are the fifth great ape.

Personally, I’m terrified of chimpanzees. If it wasn’t already obvious, they can be very territorial, and by hand alone can beat and tear a human to the extreme. There are countless depictions in media of chimps — when subjected to stressful situations — breaking down and attacking their owners. But how many people are killed every year in instances of road rage? Is it not just as likely that someone, sitting in heavy traffic, in the summer heat, bombarded with the sound of honking horns, will snap and take a gun to someone behind them? Despite our great differences, our similarities tie us closely to the other members of the Hominae family. 

***

For centuries, humans have looked to the stars and asked the same question: Are we alone? Thousands of years of expansion have seen us, in one way or another, wipe out our brother and sister homo species. We’ve spent our entire existence agonizing over the prospect that we are unique on this planet and, with the advent of space travel, unique in the universe. The prospect has spawned theories such as the Fermi Paradox, pointing out the discrepancy between the high likelihood of intelligent extraterrestrial life and the lack of evidence for its existence. The most horrifying thing isn’t us finding a hostile and more advanced civilization, but that we are alone in the immeasurable vastness of space.

We’ve spent so much time agonizing over this question that we have avoided the terrestrial reality that we are not alone. Living alongside us are thousands of apes who share our proclivities for creativity, violence, love, independence, dominance, cooperation and so much more. They give us innumerable insights into both our own evolutionary tale and our place on this planet. 

In the past, we viewed them as wild people, happily living apart from civilization. Yet today, these species are dying. Every single species of great ape is either endangered or critically endangered, something which is only exacerbated by poaching, climate change and habitat destruction. While humans continue to obliterate previous population records, chimpanzees have fallen to as few as 170,000 alive in the wild from a peak of nearly 2 million only a hundred years ago. In Indonesia, orangutans have lost 80% of their habitat in only 20 years, and the population of the Tapanuli orangutans has dropped to a mere 800. In just 50 years, gorillas and orangutans may be extinct in the wild, with chimpanzees and bonobos not far behind.

If these species die, we will no longer be the fifth great ape, but the only great ape. We will have fulfilled our greatest fears. We will truly be alone. It is our obligation to support and broaden current conservation efforts not just because we are humans with the ability to do so, but because we are also animals and should find some kinship with our evolutionary cousins.

At the end of our conversation, I asked Minati if there was something he wanted me, and the future reader, to take away. Although our conversation ranged everywhere from the scientific minutiae of primatology, the logistics of granting apes civil rights and the racism of ape as a dehumanizing term, he brought us back to the basics. That we, ourselves, are not so different from the ape.

“I would like to emphasize this point that at the end of the day, we are animals,” Mitani said. “Just in what we named ourselves, scientifically, Homosapien — wise man — we have this elevated kind of hottie opinion of ourselves. We elevate ourselves to a level that I’m not sure we should.”

Statement Correspondent Joshua Nicholson can be reached at joshuni@umich.edu.

The post The ape in the mirror appeared first on The Michigan Daily.