The project Bred in the Boneincludes
ten paired videos and over fifty paired photographs that compare
primate social interactions with like behavior in humans. The bonobo
photographs and video were all shot at Wild Animal Park in Escondido,
California and were then paired with similar or related human behavior.
George Lakoff and Mark Johnson write in their book
"Philosophy in the Flesh" that reason is "not an essence that
separates us from other animals; rather it places us on a continuum with them."
Bonobos
and chimpanzees share 98% of the same genes as us. It is possible to speculate that our shared
social responses ÂÂgo all the way back to a common ancestor that humans,
bonobos and chimpanzees all evolved from. We are all relatively newer species
that evolved from this common ancestor somewhat close in time to each other,
perhaps some 3-6 million years ago.Frans de Waal states in his book Tree of Origin that "Not only
are chimpanzees and bonobos our closest relatives, the reverse isalso true; that is chimpanzees
and bonobos are closer to us than to, say gorillas". Does that mean our
behavior is biological in origin or that we have passed on these similar responses
through culture memory?I have
found that in actively comparing the nuances of our shared behavior it hard to
not see these comparisons everywhere you look. It has changed the way I see our
own actions, sometimes it seems that we assume we are reacting to situations in
a rational manner, we seem unaware at times of the way biology guides our
actions and surprised when we don't like the results.