So let's start with calls of a nonhuman primate.

But it shrunk to 60 percent of primate gut of my body mass.

Now what I find fascinating about these examples is how they're actually tapping into our primate instincts.

We have got, under our skin, a layer of fat, all over nothing in the least like that in any other primate.

You know, she's a smart, very cut creature, a primate as well, but she lacks all the stuff we think might be messing us up.

It's the only possible explanation of why humans, if they're very unlucky, can become grossly obese, in a way that would be totally impossible for any other primate, physically impossible.

So what we find is that high power alpha males in primate hierarchies have high testosterone and low cortisol, and powerful and effective leaders also have high testosterone and low cortisol.

Laurie Santos looks for the roots of human irrationality by watching the way our primate relatives make decisions. A clever series of experiments in monkeynomics shows that some of the silly choices we make, monkeys make too.

Elaine Morgan is a tenacious proponent of the aquatic ape hypothesis the idea that humans evolved from primate ancestors who dwelt in watery habitats. Hear her spirited defense of the idea and her theory on why mainstream science doesn't take it seriously.

So we know that in primate hierarchies, if an alpha needs to take over, if an individual needs to take over an alpha role sort of suddenly, within a few days, that individual's testosterone has gone up significantly and his cortisol has dropped significantly.

Reading Fisher, one is more inclined to leave boys alone to challenge one another and test their environment, and to accept that, as she puts it, nature designed men and women to collaborate for survival. Collaboration implies free will and choice even primate males do not succeed by dominating or controlling females.

And eventually she was moving it and moving it, and eventually stopped moving her right arm and, staring at the screen, could move the prosthetic arm in the other room only with her brainwaves which means that monkey became the first primate in the history of the world to have three independent functional arms.

Why would our judgments, and our emotions, vary in this way? For most of our evolutionary history, human beings and our primate ancestors have lived in small groups, in which violence could be inflicted only in an up close and personal way, by hitting, pushing, strangling, or using a stick or stone as a club.

Darwin provided the profound understanding that evolution has influenced the shape of our minds as strongly as it has the shape of our bodies. Since humans evolved from the same primate ancestor as modern chimpanzees or gorillas, he suggested one could learn more by comparing human instincts, emotions, and behaviors to those of animals than one can surmise from subjective speculation.

However, once we set aside its elitist history, there remains a strong element of truth to this idea, especially when applied to the humanities. Although we now think of academic disciplines, including the humanities, as being research led, this understates the university s historic role in converting the primate Homo sapiens into a creature whose interests, aspirations, and achievements extend beyond successful sexual reproduction.

As far as the treatment of apes is concerned, much of the film is firmly grounded in reality, as a viewing of Project Nim, a documentary based on Elizabeth Hess s book Nim Chimpsky The Chimp Who Would be Human, clearly demonstrates. Nim was born in 1973, in a primate research facility in Oklahoma, and was taken from his mother when he was only ten days old, to be used in a sign language experiment.