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Tallis in Wonderland

Biological Reasons For Being Cheerful

Raymond Tallis puts an instinctive smile on your face.

A few months ago I received a somewhat intimidating but irresistible invitation. I was asked to open the discussion of a public lecture at the Wellcome Institute in London by Frans de Waal. Professor de Waal’s name may be familiar to you not only for his superb studies of chimpanzees, but also for a series of very readable books, beginning with Chimp Politics, in which he argues that the social behaviour of our nearest kin is more complex, and perhaps more like ours, than we usually imagine. His talk at the Wellcome was based on his latest book, Prosocial Primates: Empathy in Animals and Humans.

I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to debate with one of the world’s most eminent primatologists.

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