re: #156 Killgore Trout

On that note, I posted this on an earlier thread and still think this is the coolest thing I’ve seen today…

Tracing the Origins of Human Empathy

A pioneer in primate studies, Frans de Waal sees our better side in chimps, especially our capacity for empathy. In his research, Dr. de Waal has gathered ample evidence that our ability to identify with another’s distress — a catalyst for compassion and charity — has deep roots in the origin of our species. It is a view independently reinforced by recent biomedical studies showing that our brains are built to feel another’s pain.

Like tuning forks, we reflexively respond to others’ moods. We can weep at the plight of people we have never met or, spellbound by fiction, become caught up in the lives of people who never existed. Indeed, we may be hard-wired for empathy, University of Chicago researchers who studied children’s neural responses to others reported last year. “It starts on day one, when a baby cries because it hears another baby cry,” says Dr. de Waal.

In his new book — “The Age of Empathy” — Dr. de Waal, director of Living Links Center at Emory University’s Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Atlanta, traces the origins of our ability to put ourselves in another’s place. Drawing on his experiments and studies by other animal behaviorists, he highlights how chimpanzees and other primates console each other, prefer to share, and nurse the injured. There are no fossils of feelings, but as our closest living relatives, Dr. de Waal believes these primates are reminders of empathy’s antiquity.

RTWT