Chimps Can't Tell Us Much About Being Human

(Credit: Ari Wid/shutterstock) Do we gain insight by comparing President Trump to a chimpanzee? Can we learn something useful about gender-based violence among humans by studying other primates? Can observing chimpanzees or bonobos tell us why humans go to war or how we can get along better? The urge to try and find the animal “roots” for human behavior is enticing because humans are animals. We are mammals, primates and hominoids (the superfamily of apes). Due to these realities, we share more of our evolutionary history, our DNA, and our physiology with chimpanzees (including bonobos) than with any other living thing. In light of our commonalities, many researchers look to the chimpanzee world in order to better understand the human one. The argument goes that if warfare, sexual coercion, male aggression, the creation and use of tools, hunting, and other patterns show up in both chimpanzees and humans, then these are evolutionarily old, shared traits. Thus, understanding the reasons behind these behaviors in chimps can offer insight into similar behaviors in humans. This premise is nice, but it is mostly wrong. There is significant overlap between humans and chimpanzees. However, to draw evolutionary insights from comparisons between species, we must be sure that we are comparing the same underlying evolutionary processes and that “similar” patterns are indeed similar. Most of what chimpanzees and humans do today is not directly comparable—because we have evolved independently for millions of years. Along those very different evolutionary paths, both species have picked up a suite of distinctive ways of being in the world.