''Good Natured'' is a book by primatologist

Frans de Waal Franciscus Bernardus Maria de Waal (29 October 1948 – 14 March 2024) was a Dutch-American primatologist and ethologist. He was the Charles Howard Candler Professor of Primate Behavior in the Department of Psychology at Emory University in ...

on animal behavior and the evolution of ethics.

Publishing history

The book was published in 1996 by

Harvard University Press Harvard University Press (HUP) is an academic publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University. It is a member of the Association of University Presses. Its director since 2017 is George Andreou. The pres ...

under the full title ''Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals''. Much of the book details observations of

primate Primates is an order (biology), order of mammals, which is further divided into the Strepsirrhini, strepsirrhines, which include lemurs, galagos, and Lorisidae, lorisids; and the Haplorhini, haplorhines, which include Tarsiiformes, tarsiers a ...

behavior, especially that of

chimpanzee The chimpanzee (; ''Pan troglodytes''), also simply known as the chimp, is a species of Hominidae, great ape native to the forests and savannahs of tropical Africa. It has four confirmed subspecies and a fifth proposed one. When its close rel ...

s and

bonobo The bonobo (; ''Pan paniscus''), also historically called the pygmy chimpanzee (less often the dwarf chimpanzee or gracile chimpanzee), is an endangered great ape and one of the two species making up the genus ''Pan (genus), Pan'' (the other bei ...

s.de Waal 1996, p. 3: "After due attention in this book's first chapter to theories of evolutionary ethics, I will move on to more practical matters. Do animals show behavior that parallels the benevolence as well as the rules and regulations of human moral conduct? … As an ethologist specialized in primatology, I naturally turn most often to the order of animals to which we ourselves belong. … Our ancestors more than likely possessed many of the behavioral tendencies currently found in macaques, baboons, gorillas, chimpanzees, and so on." On the final page, he concludes:

Notes

References

External links

''Good Natured''
at the

Review by Elena Madison
{{Webarchive, url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061012062040/http://clogic.eserver.org/2002/madison.html , date=2006-10-12

Biology books Primatology Ethology Harvard University Press books