They apply their full brainpower to find solutions.

Even if we wield the better chess computer, we’re still all playing chess.”, I'm a science journalist with abundant experience in both video documentary and in science journalism.

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Chimps are humans’ closest genetic cousins. Certainly, we are not the only animals who experience pain and suffering. One more thing: I'm a video animator, but only by avocation. © 2020 Forbes Media LLC. I'm interested in the nexus of evolution and behavior.

You may opt-out by. So how about, instead of mother ‘love,’ using 'nurturing'?”, Not all scientists are quite as cautious as Crockford when describing the emotional capabilities of non-human mammals. It is a blurred line….”, For his part, Emory University primatologist Frans de Waal has written the about non-human great apes: “ All three species [orangutans, gorillas, and the chimps and bonobos of the pan species] face similar social dilemmas and need to overcome similar contradictions while going after status, mates, and resources. She and colleague Roman M. Wittig have found that levels of oxytocin rise in the urine of chimp mothers as they perform nurturing acts like food sharing, grooming, and cooperative defense. Young chimp in the arms of the mother chimpanzee. Dublin Zoo. Like humans, chimps seem capable of intention, desire, emotion, and knowledge as well as whatever higher-order mental processing is necessary to have close and easy familiarity. One more thing: I'm a video. Day in and day out, hour by hour, mothers can model social competence by bringing children with them as they travel, nest, forage, and engage in a world of community encounters. Drawing on her decades of experience with chimpanzees at the Gombe Stream Research Centre in Tanzania, and giving a nod to the work of scientists observing other species, Jane Goodall has commented, “There [is] increasingly compelling evidence that [humans] are not alone in the universe, not the only creatures with minds capable of solving problems, capable of love and hate, joy and sorrow, fear and despair. I am also a humorist and a novelist. If “love” is still not an allowable word to use when describing the mother-child relationships typical in chimpanzee communities, primatologist Catherine Crockford of the Max Plank Institute and first author on the Taï National Park paper suggests an alternative term. In other words, there is no sharp line between the human animal and the rest of the animal kingdom. I'm a science journalist with abundant experience in both video documentary and in science journalism. All Rights Reserved, This is a BETA experience. True, our species looks farther ahead and weighs more options than the apes do, but this hardly seems a fundamental difference. (Photo by Brian Lawless/PA Images via Getty Images), Impact 50: Investors Seeking Profit — And Pushing For Change, Male bonobos achieve alpha status more readily if their mothers are still alive when they try. They also have limbic systems similar to those that manage emotion and memory in humans. Darwin assumed that emotions like mother love are available to at least some animals.

I am also a humorist and a novelist.