Chimpanzees Quotes

“In what terms should we think of these beings, nonhuman yet possessing so very many human-like characteristics? How should we treat them? Surely we should treat them with the same consideration and kindness as we show to other humans; and as we recognize human rights, so too should we recognize the rights of the great apes? Yes.”
― Jane Goodall

“The anthropologists got it wrong when they named our species Homo sapiens ('wise man'). In any case it's an arrogant and bigheaded thing to say, wisdom being one of our least evident features. In reality, we are Pan narrans, the storytelling chimpanzee.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Globe

“If we look straight and deep into a chimpanzee's eyes, an intelligent self-assured personality looks back at us. If they are animals, what must we be?”
― Frans de Waal

“The buzzing was like the eager purr of a muscle car that had just been started, but left in neutral. That was another of Cody’s metaphors for it; I’d said the sensation felt like an unbalanced washing machine filled with a hundred epileptic chimpanzees. Pretty proud of that one.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Steelheart

“The least I can do is speak out for the hundreds of chimpanzees who, right now, sit hunched, miserable and without hope, staring out with dead eyes from their metal prisons. They cannot speak for themselves.”
― Jane Goodall

“I’ll give you a theory: Man’s closest relative is not the chimpanzee, as the TV people believe, but is, in fact, the dog.”
― Garth Stein, The Art of Racing in the Rain

“...two chimpanzees were observed maltreating a chicken: One would extend some food to the fowl, encouraging it to approach; whereupon the other would thrust at it with a piece of wire it had concealed behind its back. The chicken would retreat but soon allow itself to approach once again--and be beaten once again. Here is a fine combination of behavior sometimes thought to be uniquely human: cooperation, planning a future course of action, deception and cruelty.”
― Carl Sagan, The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence

“All three were wild-haired and bedraggled, as if they had just staggered from a fight to the death with a family of chimpanzees.”
― Kevin Ansbro, The Minotaur's Son & Other Wild Tales

“Lucy preferred gin and tonics during the summer and switched over to whiskey sours in the winter. At dinner, a sit-down affair with the family, Lucy drank whatever the Temerlins drank, including expensive French wines. "She never gets obnoxious, even when smashed to the brink of unconsciousness," wrote Maurice, revealing more about the chimp's alcoholism than perhaps he intended. At one point, he tried to wean Lucy off the good stuff and onto Boone's Farm apple wine. Assuming she would delight in the fruity swill, he purchased a case and filled her glass one night at dinner. Lucy took a sip of the apple wine, noticed her parents were drinking something else, and put her glass down. She then graabbed Maurice's glass of Chablis and polished it off. She finished Jane's next. Not another sip of Boone's farm ever touched her lips.”
― Elizabeth Hess, Nim Chimpsky: The Chimp Who Would Be Human

“This book [...] demonstrates something we had already suspected on the grounds of the close connection between apes and man: that the social organization of chimpanzees is almost too human to be true.”
― Frans de Waal, Chimpanzee Politics: Power and Sex among Apes

“Watching our closest living relatives, the chimpanzees, is reading the first chapter of human-being’s adventures in this universe!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“I love chimpanzees. I love their stubbornness and their strength. I love the way they dig their fingers into life and never let it get the better of them. I love the tenderness beneath their wild tempers. I love them because they refuse to apologize for who they are.”
― Vanessa Woods, Bonobo Handshake: A Memoir of Love and Adventure in the Congo

“What might happen if we could somehow reorient ourselves toward our more loving, bonobo side rather than our inner mad chimpanzee?”
― Susan Block, The Bonobo Way

“Primatologists Richard Wrandham and Dale Peterson summarize... writing, 'Chimpanzee-like violence preceded and paved the way for human war, making modern humans the dazed survivors of a continuous 5-million-year habit of lethal aggression.”
― Cacilda Jethá, Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality

“El pretender que la cultura sea un fenómeno exclusivamente humano conlleva serios y graves problemas similares a los inherentes a la no aceptación de la evolución biológica; pensar que la cultura emergió de la nada del brazo del género Homo es caer nuevamente en una vieja trampa.”
― Jordi Sabater Pi

“It gets very hard to predict the future once you have smarter-than-human things around. In the same way that it gets very hard for a chimp to predict what is going to happen because there are smarter-than-chimp things around. That’s what the Singularity is: it’s the point past which you expect you can’t see.”
― Nate Soares

“Even though I knew she never belonged to me, my heart didn't agree.

The old man and the boy crouched as still as lizards.

It was the last time I would ever do that.”
― Gail Gillespie-Fox

“The old man and the boy crouched as still as lizards”
― Gail Gillespie-Fox

“It was the last time I would ever do that.”
― Gail Gillespie-Fox

“I guess you could say I’ve got a monkey on my back. A monkey named Darwin.” He shrugged off the trench coat and there she was, clinging tightly to his shoulders. The hunch on his back wasn’t a hunch at all, but as fine a specimen of a female chimpanzee as I’m ever likely to see.”
― Phillip Andrew Bennett Low, Get Thee Behind Me, Santa: An Inexcusably Filthy Children's Time-Travel Farce for Adults Only

“Jocelyn told me that she had never seen me so out of control of my life. Even the recent record of my mishandling of events with Mary and Francine might have alerted her to the fact that I often confronted problems like an improvising chimpanzee faced with the dashboard of a jumbo jet. What she did not grasp was that old muddle-minded Johnny was trying, above all else, in a spirit of life-long caprice, to re-establish his own authority and get his simian claws on the levers.”
― John Osborne, Looking Back: Never Explain, Never Apologise

“Physiological proof that being the alpha male is not all roses came from baboon droppings collected on the plains of Kenya. Extraction of stress hormones from feces has shown that low-ranking males are much more stressed than high-ranking ones. This sounds logical, because subordinates are chased around and excluded from contact with females. The big surprise, however, is that the top male is just as stressed as the males near the bottom of the hierarchy. This applies only to the highest-ranking male, as he is constantly on the lookout for signs of insubordination and collusion that might unseat him. “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown,” wrote Shakespeare about King Henry IV, which may apply equally to alpha male baboons and chimpanzees.”
― Frans de Waal, Mama's Last Hug: Animal Emotions and What They Tell Us about Ourselves

“For men, as Kissinger once said, power is the ultimate aphrodisiac. They jealously guard it, and if anyone challenges them, they lose all inhibitions. The same occurs in chimps. The first time I saw an established leader lose face, the noise and passion of his reaction astonished me. Normally a dignified character, this alpha male became unrecognizable when confronted by a challenger who slapped his back during a passing charge and slung huge rocks in his direction. The challenger barely stepped out of the way when the alpha countercharged. What to do now? In the midst of such a confrontation, the alpha would drop out of a tree like a rotten apple, writhe on the ground, scream pitifully, and wait to be comforted by the rest of the group. He acted much like a juvenile ape being pushed away from his mother’s breast. And like a juvenile, who during a noisy tantrum keeps an eye on Mom for signs of softening, the alpha took note of who approached him. When the group around him was big enough, he instantly regained courage. With his supporters in tow, he rekindled the confrontation with his rival.

Once he lost his top spot, this alpha male sat staring into the distance after every brawl, unaccustomed to losing them. He’d have an empty expression on his face, oblivious to the social activity around him. He refused food for weeks. He became a mere ghost of the impressive big shot he had been. For this beaten and dejected alpha male, it was as if the lights had gone out.”
― Frans de Waal, Mama's Last Hug: Animal Emotions and What They Tell Us about Ourselves

“There is one group of comparative psychologists who spend a lot of time training chimpanzees to do things that humans can do like use language and solve problems. This is mostly because the researches really like having pet chimps and impressing their friends.”
― Madison Hamill, Specimen

“Wambach's concerns raised questions about the impact that deaf signers could have on Project Nim, and perhaps inadvertently about how Terrace's study might compare with the work done by the Gardners in Nevada, who had expressly designed their experiments to include deaf signers. Simply having Falitz sign at the weekly meetings and interpret for Wambach in the discussions brought a new dimension to their work. Wambach was not particularly critical of Terrace, who was older and far more established than she, but she wanted the staff to have a better understanding of the world of deaf speakers—those who used ASL because they needed a language.
Thanks to Wambach, the chimp project began attracting deaf volunteers (including one who is remembered for having love and hate tattooed on his knuckles), who formed a small subculture within Terrace's staff. In an attempt to bridge these two worlds, one night the deaf volunteers arranged to plug up the ears of the hearing staff and take them out to a restaurant for dinner. They were instructed to communicate exclusively in ASL from the moment the plugs were placed in their ears on the way to the restaurant, during the meal, and all the way back to Delafield. The hearing group found the experience to be a terrible struggle. But what made an indelible impression on Johnson was the way that everybody in the restaurant spoke really slowly and loudly to them, treating them as if they were all mentally incapacitated.”
― Elizabeth Hess, Nim Chimpsky: The Chimp Who Would Be Human

“When visitors toured through IPS, Lemmon encouraged the chimps to perform. The most common trick among them was a cigarette gag. The chimps all liked to smoke, but a few put the lit end of the cigarette into their mouths as if they were making a dumb mistake, and then proceeded to take a long deep drag. First-time visitors always gasped, a response that all the chimps found highly amusing.”
― Elizabeth Hess, Nim Chimpsky: The Chimp Who Would Be Human

“[...] the chimps had many empty hours to fill. Time can seem endless and often cruel for caged animals.
Nim and Sally did have some diversions in their enclosure: a small television set, rarely watched; a tire swing; a basketball set; and a variety of allegedly indestructible toys. But the chimps mainly passed the time interacting with each other—grooming, cuddling, playing, chasing. When occasional squabbles erupted, their high-pitched screeches could be heard from a distance. Minutes later the couple would make up and hug. Nim was frequently seen signing “sorry” to Sally, who always forgave her close friend.
On his own, Nim spent hours flipping through the pages of old magazines, seeming particularly diverted by images of people. The magazines, which Nim tore to shreds, were swept away at the end of each day and replaced by new ones in the morning. But he did manage to keep two children's books intact—no small accomplishment. His prize possessions, they were carefully tucked away in the loft area of his cage. (WER would have appreciated Nim's affection for books.) During the day, Nim brought the books down from the loft and pored over them intently, as if studying for an exam. One was a Sesame Street book with an illustrated section on how to learn ASL. The other was in essence his personal photo album from his New York years, a battered copy of The Story of Nim: The Chimp Who Learned Language, published in 1980. In it, dozens of black-and-white photographs of Nim— with Terrace, LaFarge, Petitto, Butler, and a handful of others—tell the story of his childhood (or an idealized version of it) from his infancy to his return to Oklahoma. Nim appears dressed in little-boy clothes, doing household chores, and learning his first signs. The book ends with a photo of Nim and Mac playing together, cage-free, in Oklahoma. The accompanying text explains that Nim is a chimpanzee, not a human, which was why he had been sent back to IPS.”
― Elizabeth Hess, Nim Chimpsky: The Chimp Who Would Be Human