Mama's Last Hug: Animal Emotions and What They Teach Us about Ourselves

· Granta Books
Ebook
243
Pages
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About this ebook

Mama's Last Hug opens with the moving farewell between Mama, a dying chimpanzee matriarch, and her human friend, a professor who inspired the author's work. Their parting, the video of which has been watched by millions online, is not only a window into the deep bonds they shared, but into the remarkable emotional capacities of animals.

In this groundbreaking and entertaining book, primatologist Frans de Waal draws on his renowned studies of the social and emotional lives of chimpanzees, bonobos and other primates, and personal encounters with many other species, to illuminate new ideas and findings about animal emotions: joy, grief, shame, love, pain and happiness.

Exploring the facial expressions of animals, human and animal politics, and animal consciousness, de Waal illustrates how profoundly we have underestimated animals' emotional experiences. He argues that emotions occupy a far more significant place in the way we organise our societies than a more rationalist approach would advocate. His radical proposal is that emotions are like organs: humans haven't a single organ that other animals don't have, and the same can be said of our emotions.

About the author

FRANS DE WAAL has been named one of Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People. The New York Times bestselling author of Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? (Granta, 2016) and Our Inner Ape (Granta, 2005) among many other works, he is the C. H. Candler Professor in Emory University's Psychology Department and director of the Living Links Center at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center. He lives in Atlanta, Georgia.

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