The screaming is coming from the monkey cage. The zoo visitors who have been gazing at neighboring animals–the sleepy North American black bears, the hairy and ponderous North American bisons, the leggy and brilliant flamingos–rush now to the monkey cage, like children drawn to a school-yard fight. Cashew has just bitten Cindy. Now he is chasing her up the stone steps. He corners her and glares, openmouthed. Cindy, shivering, bares her teeth and screams back. “They’re so mean to each other,” a woman tells her small daughter. Cashew heads to the water basin for a drink. The fracas apparently over, the human onlookers depart.
In a zoo in his native Netherlands in the 1970s, de Waal noted that, soon after a conflict, chimpanzees often hug and kiss. The bonobos he observed for several months in the San Diego Zoo in 1983 would fondle each other and sometimes mate after a fight. For the last decade, here at the Vilas Park Zoo, he has studied stump-tailed monkeys as well as the rhesus. After two stump-tails clash, one frequently will present its rear end to the other, who then pulls the first down into its lap. Rhesus monkeys usually just sit next to each other after a conflict, or bump lightly together, as if inadvertently. But whether the reconciliation is just brushing shoulders or mating, it serves the same purpose, de Waal says: making it clear to the combatants that the fight is over, and thus restoring the peace.
Some of the scientists expanded on their views in a subsequent book, Aggression and War. “In many [human] societies, aggression is rare or absent,” a psychologist wrote in an introductory section. “This means that, whatever the bases of human aggression, it is within the capacity of humans to do away with it.”
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As for the idea that we should try to eliminate aggression, de Waal says with a big laugh, “Good luck. There will always be aggression–I consider that a given. There can’t be a friction-free society just as there can’t be a friction-free engine. Given that, we should focus not on eliminating aggression, but on how we cope with it.”
One day de Waal noted a deep gash in an armpit of the alpha–highest status–monkey of the group he was watching. The alpha monkey trembled every time his son, the second-ranking monkey, walked by: it seemed clear the son had bitten his father during a fight. Both monkeys at first showed a great deal of anxiety: the alpha monkey worried about being deposed, de Waal presumed, and his son feared a counterattack. But instead of attacking each other, the father and son began picking on other members of the group, especially one monkey whom they would corner and take turns assaulting. After a few days, the tension between the two top-ranking monkeys had abated. De Waal wrote his first article, on how scapegoating can help restore harmony. Already he was focusing not so much on aggression as on the social maneuvers that maintain a group’s equilibrium. Like monkeys, people frequently look for a common enemy to keep or restore peace between them, de Waal says today.
Male chimps “are more opportunistic,” de Waal says, “whereas females are very good at keeping grudges. I’m tempted to say the same applies to humans. Feminists have emphasized how deep and intimate the friendships are among women. But I think the competition among women is also very intense–we just don’t notice it as much, because female rivals stay away from each other. I read a study recently on how boys and girls play games. It found that boys quarrel endlessly over the rules, but they continue playing. But when girls fight over the rules, they stop the game and leave. I’m not saying the male style is better; males sacrifice a lot. Because of their opportunism, they can never trust someone completely.”
