Honor Among Beasts

But while animals may not possess true ethics or morality, Bekoff, De Waal and a growing number of their colleagues think fairness and cooperation may be the forerunners of those qualities, just as the apelike brain of our distant ancestor Lucy was the forerunner of our own, much more sophisticated minds. After all, Lucy was no Einstein—but without her, the leap from the tiny brains of primitive mammals to the subtle intelligence of an Einstein could never have occurred. --Reported by Dan Cray/Los Angeles and Wendy Grossman/Houston