Tracing the Origins of Human Empathy

[snopes]

n 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.

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