Chimpanzee Politics: Power and Sex among Apes Book

Chimpanzee Politics by Frans de Waal is an attempt to provide a valid overview of what the author believes can be coined as politics among our closest genetic relatives, the chimpanzees. He does an excellent job, mostly.

By following a popular definition of politics, he describes it as a social process determining who gets what, when, and how, and further says that there can be little doubt that chimpanzess engage in it. Subsequent chapters describe a chimpanzee colony in the Arnhem Zoo, the Netherlands, and its relation to social interactions, such as reciprocity and strategic intelligence.

Reader's main concern is raised early in the book, with the author's parallel between his study and island biogeography. De Waal rightly points out that the relative simplicity of islands has allowed naturalists, such as Darwin, to develop ideas applicable to more complex systems. He then concludes, though, that since the chimpanzee island at the Arnhem Zoo housed a limited number of chimpanzees [just like a real island], under simplified conditions,the principles he presents in his case-study apply to apes on an island and apes in the zoo.

The author does not seem to acknowledge that those simplified conditions in the said environments can, and most probably do, derive from non-identical conditions. For wild apes, they can be advantageous just as much as potentially lethal (e.g. weather-relative factors, like abundance or scarcity of food), whereas the apes in the zoo do not have to face negative consequences of their surrounding. In a footnote, the author evokes further parallels drawn by another primatologist, Christopher Boehm. Yet, he somehow fails to mention that Boehm points out to factors - non-existent in a zoo - that can potentially breach social structure of wild apes, such as inter-group conflicts that, for instance, put pressure on adult males and make them evidently more agressive towards infants (vide: Hierarchy in the Forest). He admits that superficial conditions were applied to study the Arnhem colony: In Arnhem the problem of competition for food has beem effectively solved by two measures. First, the public are kept away from the animals so that they cannot feed them. Second, the apes are split up every evening into small groups and fed in the cen cages where they sleep [in order to alleviate the aggression among the chimpanzees]. If anything, the Arnhem zoo is more like a haven than a recreation of natural enviornment.

Nevertheless, Frans de Waal's study is exemplary in describing intra-group behavioural patterns and their interdependency. He brilliantly shows how important formalized ranks among chimpanzees are and what influences them. When the ranks become unclear, a dominance struggle ensues. Chimpanzees, just like humans, form coalitions (vide: Sociobiology) in order to gain power. There is a very interesting example of such a coalition between three adult males ('the triumvirate') that showcases a striking similarity to human coalitions.

Moreover, he book tackles issues such as the importance of stability and balance among the chimpanzees in the group. The human economic system, with its reciprocal transactions and centralization, is recognizable among our distant cousins, too (they exchange social favours rather than gifts). Also, chimpanzees can rationalize strategies and engage in games of social manipulations to achieve their goals, for instance, by sexual intercourse.

The biggest advantage of this book is its personal character. De Waal provides multiple examples and anecdotes, such as the Big Escape. Despite the warnings from the zoo officials, several large branches were left lying around on the ape's island. Apparently, the chimpanzees placed branches against a wall and scaled the wall. Some of them visited a restaurant that day and ate oranges and bananas.