The Ape and the Sushi Master

The Ape and the Sushi Master challenges our most basic assumptions about who we are and how we differ from other animals. In a delightful mix of autobiographical anecdote, rigorous research, and speculation, eminent primatologist Frans de Waal leads us to consider the possibility that apes have their own culture. We think that only we humans are culturally free and sophisticated, varying our behavior from group to group. but what if apes react to situations with behavior learned through observation of their elders (culture) rather than through pure genetic instinct (nature)? Such a scenario shakes our centuries-old convictions about what makes humans distinct. It also counters our recent tendency to look at other animals as slaves of their genetic programs: if animals learn from each other the way we do, this brings them much closer to us. De Waal corrects the assumption that humans are the only form of intelligent life to have made the leap from the natural to the cultural. The book's title derives from an analogy he draws between the way behavior is transmitted in ape society and the way sushi-making skills are passed down from the sushi master to his apprentice through careful observation. At the same time that he explores the specifics of social transmission, however, de Waal tackles the bigger issue of how our own human culture affects the way we look at other animals, and how what we know about animals reflects back on us. In doing so, he explores the influence of European ethology and Japanese primatology on the way we think about animal behavior. The question of animal culture is culturally loaded, and it can be no accident that the impetus for cultural studies of animals came from the East, which has less of a tendency to set humans apart from nature.