Alison Ruttan
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Bred in the Bone, 2008

The project Bred in the Bone includes ten paired videos and over fifty paired photographs that compare primate social interactions with like behavior in humans. The bonobo photographs and video were all shot at Wild Animal Park in Escondido, California and were then paired with similar or related human behavior. 

 

George Lakoff and Mark Johnson write in their book "Philosophy in the Flesh" that reason is "not an essence that separates us from other animals; rather it places us on a continuum with them."

 

Bonobos and chimpanzees share 98% of the same genes as us. It is possible to speculate that our shared social responses ­go all the way back to a common ancestor that humans, bonobos and chimpanzees all evolved from. We are all relatively newer species that evolved from this common ancestor somewhat close in time to each other, perhaps some 3-6 million years ago.  Frans de Waal states in his book Tree of Origin that "Not only are chimpanzees and bonobos our closest relatives, the reverse is also true; that is chimpanzees and bonobos are closer to us than to, say gorillas". Does that mean our behavior is biological in origin or that we have passed on these similar responses through culture memory?  I have found that in actively comparing the nuances of our shared behavior it hard to not see these comparisons everywhere you look. It has changed the way I see our own actions, sometimes it seems that we assume we are reacting to situations in a rational manner, we seem unaware at times of the way biology guides our actions and surprised when we don't like the results.

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