Along with people in other creative professions, such as artists and musicians, many scientists experience this transcendence. I do so every day. For one, it's impossible to look an ape in the eye and not see oneself. There are other animals with frontally oriented eyes, but none that give you the shock of recognitions of the ape's. Looking back at you is not so much an animal but a personality as solid and willful as yourself.
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About Frans de Waal
Frans de Waal was a 20th-century Dutch primatologist and ethologist. Franciscus Bernardus Maria de Waal was a Dutch-American primatologist and ethologist. He was the Charles Howard Candler Professor of Primate Behavior in the Department of Psychology at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, director of the Living Links Center at the Emory National Primate Research Center, and author of numerous books including Chimpanzee Politics (1982) and Our Inner Ape (2005). Read more on Wikipedia →