James' World 2

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Frans de Waal calls his book Mama’s Last Hug in reference to an emotional encounter between Mama, a 58-year-old chimpanzee, and Jan van Hooff, an 80-year-old biology professor. Mama is frail and near death when Van Hooff, who had overseen her care for decades, enters her cage at Burgers Zoo in the Netherlands. Mama smiles and Van Hooff bends toward her. She strokes his white hair and drapes one of her arms around his neck, patting the back of his head with her long fingers. “This was typical Mama,” writes De Waal, who had long observed the chimpanzee. De Waal gave her the name Mama because of her matriarchal position. “She had the air of a grandmother who had seen it all and didn’t take nonsense from anybody,” De Waal writes. “I had never sensed such wisdom and poise in any other species but my own.” When Van Hooff entered Mama’s cage, “she must have sensed Jan’s trepidation about invading her domain, and she was letting him know not to worry. She was happy to see him.”

The touching scene between Mama and Van Hooff has been viewed over 10 million times on YouTube. Clearly, it has struck a deep emotional chord in people, no doubt because of the joy and tenderness that the chimpanzee displays at the end of her long life. De Waal, who runs Living Links Center at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Atlanta, uses the scene to open his investigation into the emotions of animals, from primates to dogs to rats. “Let me start off with a radical proposal: emotions are like organs,” he writes. “They are all needed, and we share them with all with other mammals.” Those who are familiar with De Waal’s research know the proposal is not so radical, as the primatologist has for decades been showing humans that we are not as special as many of our species seem to think we are. The title of his previous book offers a keen summary of his outlook: Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?

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Pete Marra is haunted by cats. He sees them everywhere: slinking down alleys, crouched under porches, glaring at him out of wild, starved eyes.

People assume that Marra, head of the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center and author of the book Cat Wars, hates cats. This is not the case. “I love cats,” he says, calling them “fascinating, magnificent animals,” that seem to have a “freakish love for me.” He’s even considered a pet cat, despite being mildly allergic. “This is the thing people don’t realize,” Marra told me at a café near his office in Washington, D.C. “I’m both a wild animal advocate and a domestic animal advocate. If my mother thought I wasn’t supporting cats, she’d be flipping in her grave.”

It’s an understandable mistake. After all, Marra has made himself the public face of what sounds a lot like an anti-cat crusade. For years, the wildlife ecologist has been investigating the lethal implications of cats and urging that pet owners keep them indoors. He argues in Cat Wars: The Devastating Consequences of a Cuddly Killer, co-authored with freelance writer Chris Santella, the time has come for more drastic action: a concerted, nationwide effort to rid the landscape of cats. (The book is based on Marra’s personal and scientific research, and the views and conclusion are expressly his own and do not represent those of the Smithsonian Institution.)

That effort will require an ugly reality: the targeted killing of felines. “No one likes the idea of killing cats,” Marra concludes in his book. “But sometimes, it is necessary.”

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Do outdoor cats need to die? Photo by Louise LeGresley / Getty Images.

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