This is an undercover investigation of the evolution and economics of human relationships. Primatologist Dario Maestripieri examines the curious unspoken customs that govern our behaviour. Though apparently motivated by free will, these patterns are so similar from person to person, and across species, that they reveal much more than our selected choices.
To understand the rules that govern primate games and our social interactions, Maestripieri arms readers with knowledge of the scientific principles that ethologists, psychologists, economists and other behavioural scientists have discovered in their quest to unravel the complexities of behaviour. Interestingly, some of the major aspects of human nature have profound commonalities with our ape ancestors: the violence of war, the intensity of love, the need to live together.