Mama's Last Hug: Animal Emotions and What They Tell Us about Ourselves by Frans de Waal

A New York Times Bestseller and winner of the PEN / E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award Primatologist Frans de Waal explores the fascinating world of animal and human emotions. Frans de Waal has spent four decades at the forefront of animal research. Following up on the best-selling Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?, which investigated animal intelligence, Mama's Last Hug delivers a fascinating exploration of the rich emotional lives of animals. Mama's Last Hug begins with the death of Mama, a chimpanzee matriarch who formed a deep bond with biologist Jan van Hooff. When Mama was dying, van Hooff took the unusual step of visiting her in her night cage for a last hug. Their goodbyes were filmed and went viral. Millions of people were deeply moved by the way Mama embraced the professor, welcoming him with a big smile while reassuring him by patting his neck, in a gesture often considered typically human but that is in fact common to all primates. This story and others like it form the core of de Waal's argument, showing that humans are not the only species with the capacity for love, hate, fear, shame, guilt, joy, disgust, and empathy. De Waal discusses facial expressions, the emotions behind human politics, the illusion of free will, animal sentience, and, of course, Mama's life and death. The message is one of continuity between us and other species, such as the radical proposal that emotions are like organs: we don't have a single organ that other animals don't have, and the same is true for our emotions. Mama's Last Hug opens our hearts and minds to the many ways in which humans and other animals are connected, transforming how we view the living world around us. Editorial Reviews ...game-changing...For too long, emotion has been cognitive researchers' third rail. In research on humans, emotions were deemed irrelevant, impossible to study or beneath scientific notice. Animal emotions were simply ignored. But nothing could be more essential to understanding how people and animals behave. By examining emotions in both, this book puts these most vivid of mental experiences in evolutionary context, revealing how their richness, power and utility stretch across species and back into deep time...Though emotions are our constant, intimate companions, de Waal surprises us on almost every page...Instead of worrying about anthropomorphizing animals, we should fear making a far worse mistake, what de Waal calls anthropodenial. When we deny the facts of evolution, when we pretend that only humans think, feel and know, it stands in the way of a frank assessment of who we are as a species, he writes. An understanding of evolution demands that we recognize continuity across life-forms. And even more important, achieving realistic and compassionate relationships with the rest of the animate world requires that we honor these connections, which extend far and deep. - The New York Times Book Review - Sy Montgomery *12/10/2018 In this illuminating--and remarkably moving--treatise on animal empathy, Emory University primatologist de Waal (Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?) delivers some of his most damaging, and joyous, blows yet to human exceptionalism. Drawing on his own extensive experiences, de Waal recounts example after example of animals displaying humanlike emotions and emotional intelligence. Parrots, jays, mice, and apes can time travel, or project themselves into future events based on an awareness of the past, while monkeys and various bird species can delay gratification. This all makes sense, he argues, since animals just can't afford to blindly run after their impulses. On a less lofty plane, chimps have been observed being cruel for fun, and rats can laugh (albeit ultrasonically). De Waal reflects that much has changed during his career. His proposal that animals can reconcile with each other after conflicts met with skepticism during the 1970s, but is now widely accepted. One remaining mystery--whether animals have free will--can't be answered, he argues, until humans know if they themselves actually possess that trait. Making clear that instead of tiptoeing around emotions, researchers must now squarely face the degree to which all animals are driven by them, de Waal's masterful work of evolutionary psychology will leave both fellow academics and intellectually curious layreaders with much food for thought. (Mar.) - Publishers Weekly I doubt that I've ever read a book as good as Mama's Last Hug, because it presents in irrefutable scientific detail the very important fact that animals do have these emotions as well as the other mental features we once attributed only to people. Not only is the book exceedingly important, it's also fun to read, a real page-turner. I can't say enough good things about it except it's utterly splendid. - Elizabeth Marshall Thomas A captivating and big-hearted book, full of compassion and brimming with insights about the lives of animals, including human ones. - Yuval Noah Harari In Mama's Last Hug, Frans de Waal marshals his wealth of knowledge and experience, toggling expertly between rigorous science and captivating anecdote to explain animal behavior-humans included. While doing so, he rebukes the common conceit that we are necessarily better, or smarter, than our closest relatives. - Jonathan Balcombe An original thinker, [de Waal] seems to invite us to his front-row seats, sharing the popcorn as he gets us up to speed on the plot of how life works, through deeply affecting stories of primates and other animals, all dramas with great lessons for our own species. - Boston Globe - Vicki Constantine Croke De Waal's eye-opening observations argue for better treatment and greater appreciation of animals, even as he ensures that you'll never look at them-or yourself-the same way again. - People Frans de Waal is one of the most influential primatologists to ever walk the earth, changing the way we think of human nature by exploring its continuity with other species. He does this again in the wonderful Mama's Last Hug, an examination of the continuum between emotion in humans and other animals. This subject is rife with groundless speculation, ideology, and badly misplaced folk intuition, and de Waal ably navigates it with deep insight, showing the ways in which our emotional lives are shared with other primates. This is an important book, wise and accessible. - Robert Sapolsky De Waal's conversational writing is at times moving, often funny and almost always eye-opening....It's hard to walk away from Mama's Last Hug without a deeper understanding of our fellow animals and our own emotions. - Science News - Erin Wayman Before I realized Frans de Waal's connection to Mama's actual last hug, I sent the online video link to a large group of scientists saying, ‘I believe it is possible to view this interaction and be changed forever.' Likewise, I believe that anyone reading this book will be changed forever. De Waal has spent so many decades watching intently and thinking deeply that he sees a planet that is deeper and more beautiful than almost anyone realizes. In these pages, you can acquire and share his beautiful, shockingly insightful view of life on Earth. - Carl Safina *2018-11-26 Once again, the eminent primatologist takes readers deep into the world of animals to show us that we humans are not the unique creatures we like to think we are. In his latest highly illuminating exploration of the inner lives of animals, de Waal (Psychology/Emory Univ.), the director of the Living Links Center at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center, provides a companion piece to his prizewinning Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? (2016), which revealed the sophistication of animals' brains. Here, it is their emotions that take center stage. One of our keenest observers of emotional expressions, body language, and social dynamics, the author demonstrates that pride, shame, guilt, revenge, gratefulness, forgiveness, hope, and disgust all exist in other animals, not just humans. A dying chimpanzee matriarch's farewell to her longtime caretaker provides the title of the book, but this is just the first of many stories about the immense--and unique--emotional capacities of animals. I don't expect to ever again encounter an ape personality as expressive and inspiring as Mama's, he writes. De Waal is impatient with scholars who assert that language lies at the heart of emotions, that feelings cannot be expressed without language. Sometimes he names names; sometimes he simply dismisses their ideas as nonsense. Most of the author's observations involve the spontaneous behavior of chimpanzees, bonobos, and other primates, but readers will also be rewarded with tales of birds, dogs, horses, elephants, and rats. As he has shown in nearly all of his books, de Waal is a skilled storyteller, and his love for animals always shines through. His examples of the actions of certain humans--e.g., Donald Trump, Sean Spicer--lend color to his argument, and the simple drawings that illustrate behaviors and facial expressions are exceptionally clear and effective. De Waal turns his years of research into a delightful and illuminating read for nonscientists, a book that will surely make readers want to grab someone's arm and exclaim, Listen to this! - Kirkus Reviews Through colorful stories and riveting prose, de Waal firmly puts to rest the stubborn notion that humans alone in the animal kingdom experience a broad array of emotions. - NPR - Barbara J. King After you've read Mama's Last Hug it becomes obvious that animals have emotions. Learn how they resemble us in many ways. - Temple Grandin There is nothing sentimental about de Waal's position.... All the things he has learned about animals have come from observation. He is a brilliant observer, and is often amazed by what he sees. - New Scientist - Michael Bond