Essay Database

Summary Paper Machiavellian Monkeys "The sneaky skills of our primate cousins suggest that we may owe our great intelligence to an inherited need to deceive." Machiavellian Monkeys, James Shreeve, Discover, June 1991. Fraud. Deception. Infidelity. Theft. When these words are spoken, or read, the first thought is of human traits. Not once would someone think of animals as being capable of such actions, but people forget that humans are animals, and that the human animal evolved …

…the great apes. Perhaps this is why people tend to resist the idea that humans are fundamentally Machiavellian in nature; it is behaviour that seems too animalistic. It does seem, though, that the exact opposite could be true: Machiavellian behaviour is humanistic behaviour evident in the animals we call primates. No matter how we look at it, the fact remains that the observation of this type of behaviour in primates is significant to physical anthropology.