The lines of nature seemed clear then. People were the children of God, and animals were, in the words of the Bible, "dumb beasts."
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Perhaps we emphasized our souls because our bodies, washed and dressed up as they might be, were still animal bodies. Although we did not have horns and tails, we knew they would be part of the punishment package if we did not pay proper attention to our souls. We poked fun at people who reminded us of animals. I remember my mother's disdain for a neighbor who scratched his back against a doorjamb. She said, "He looks like a hog scratching his back on a fence post."
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Monkey Glands and Culture
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In 1955, I left the farm, went to college and then to graduate school, and became a social psychologist. I lived in cities, studied people, and didn't think much about animals until 1972, when I visited the Yerkes Primate Field Station, near Atlanta, Georgia. Scientists there were studying the social life of primates. They studied relationships, leadership, communication, sex, and aggression. Dr. Irwin Bernstein showed me around and told me about their work.
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One part of the project involved redwood "totem poles" he had put up in the monkey compounds. Each pole had an electrically charged grid near the top, and the point of the study was to see how the monkeys would learn about the grids and tell the others about them. Not all monkeys responded the same way. One group ate their pole, and another never went near theirs. But in a group of stump-tailed macaques, the dominant male, called the alpha male, took the pole very seriously. Bernstein pointed him out to me. He was easy to identify by the way he strutted, fluffed out his fur, and stood with his front paws turned outward, making himself look bigger than he was. The alpha male had special privileges, including extra sex, but he also had responsibilities. He took it as part of his job to explore anything new or potentially harmful. It was he who climbed the tower first thing in the morning after it was put up and discovered it was dangerous. He braved a shock or two, pretending to feel no pain, but when the shocks continued, he let out a warning scream and jumped down. With the assistance of the beta male, his second-in-command, he chased the other monkeys into their indoor quarters. There they remained the rest of the morning, the alpha male leaning out the
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