In the Prologue to The Ape and the Sushi Master, de Waal claims that we like to laugh at apes trying to behave as humans—and failing—in order to assuage our doubts about ourselves and affirm our uniqueness in the animal kingdom. He illustrates his claim with descriptions of ape tea parties in the nineteenth century and stories about Jo Mendi from the 1930s, Petermann from the 1980s, and The Chimp Channel, a short-lived television show from 1999.
I don’t think that zoos still have ape tea parties, and I’m not convinced that “Hollywood produces cannot resist throwing in a chimp or an orangutan when their script asks for a laugh and they have failed to come up with anything better” (3), but I am I am wondering—is de Waal right? Do we make fun of apes in order to feel better about ourselves? Do we have a need to see ourselves as unique?
Does that limit our ability to understand ourselves or the world we live in?
Feel free to respond directly to these questions, or you may wish to respond to another student’s response.
