In Memorium:
Frans de Waal, Ph.D.
1948-2024
Frans de Waal, a scientist who challenged us to see ourselves and other animals differently, passed away at the age of 75 in March 2024. Frans’ work as an ethologist (a term he would use to describe himself, despite a Jeopardy! clue describing him as a primatologist) was groundbreaking and changed study of animal behavior, but also went far beyond that to influence philosophy, religion, economics, and politics. His prolific public writing, both formally through books and popular essays and informally through his social media and numerous talks for large audiences, challenged millions of people to reconsider what we know about animals and our relationship with them.
Frans was born in the Netherlands and, like so many of us, had an affinity for and interest in animals from a young age. He completed his Ph.D. at the University of Utrecht studying aggression in macaques. His subsequent work studying chimpanzee behavior at the Arnhem Zoo, led to his first book, Chimpanzee Politics. This research turned out to be extremely influential. Chimpanzees were characterized as particularly aggressive, and while his book discusses aggression, it also documents sophisticated peacemaking mechanisms and gaining political favor through positive engagement with others. It was required reading for some members of the U.S. Congress in the mid-1990s and one might argue that given the current state of politics, it could stand to be brought back.
In 1981, invited by the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center, he left the Netherlands and moved to the United States of America. During his ten years at the University of Wisconsin-Madison studying rhesus and stumped-tailed macaques he also started his seminal work on bonobos. In the winter of 1983-1984, he spent five months observing a large colony of bonobos at the San Diego Zoo, collecting data, videotaping them and taking an impressive amount of photographs.
Frans moved to Atlanta to join the faculty at Emory University in 1991. He published numerous other books and eventually became the C.H. Candler Professor of Psychology and the founder of Living Links at what was then known as the Yerkes National Primate Center. He retired and gained emeritus status in 2019. I first encountered Frans as a prospective graduate student at Emory in 2007. Embarrassingly, I did not know how famous he was—this was a few months before he was named to the Time 100. This naivete probably saved me however, as I was not at all starstruck and was able to go in and pitch my ideas with complete confidence and was accepted into his lab. I joined a remarkable group of postdocs, graduate students, visiting scholars who, along with Frans, have shaped the course of my career. What a lot of people don’t know is that Frans thought of his lab as his “second family.” He intentionally built community by having us not only share offices, ideas, and projects with each other, but also share meals. He and his beloved wife, Catherine Marin, regularly welcomed us into their home, memories that I treasure. He continued to foster that connection, even after I left Emory. Whenever he was even remotely near Buffalo, NY, where I am now based, he would reach out to see if we could meet up for a meal.
As a scholar, Frans taught me to think big and take risks, but do it rigorously so that the work spoke for itself. He trained me to explain my work in language that was exciting and accessible, a skill which I use all the time in my current role. I still have a deep visceral hatred of multi-part titles that use a lot of jargon, thanks to him. He emphasized taking the time to observe the animals before developing an experiment, something that I think gets lost a lot today as we have to make our experiments more technical and complicated, and the pace of research has accelerated. He had a quiet confidence in us and our work. I remember a moment when he asked me to submit an abstract to give a talk at a symposium on the evolution of morality in Erice, Sicily. My first thought was, “I don’t study morality,” to which his response was, “of course your work fits.” And then he left me to figure out how. Then I realized I was the only student presenting, amongst an interdisciplinary group of scholars who were all very well established in their fields. But he knew. He knew that my research was a great fit, and that I needed to see that connection for myself, and he knew that I could hold my own in that group. And he was right.
Because Frans was so well known publicly, I often get asked what he was like as a person. He was one of those rare people who remained a genuinely good person, despite fame and attention. For someone who wrote about politics in other species, he was remarkably adept at avoiding drama and politics. He was always ready with quick wit and an irreverent comment to break the mood if needed. He had many interests outside of animal behavior, including a love of art and late-night comedy. I remember many occasions debating with him if the older iterations of Saturday Night Live were actually better, or if we just remember it as being better because we only replay the good sketches and the bad sketches have been lost to history. When Jon Stewart returned to the Daily Show earlier this year, I immediately wondered what Frans would have thought of that move.
Frans leaves behind so many legacies with his contributions to science and the public understanding of animals. He also leaves a personal legacy with his former students. I learned a different side of academia from him—one that was collaborative and that celebrated everyone’s successes, one that values people at all levels of the endeavor. Whenever I teach animal cognition or animal behavior, I have often felt like I am in conversation with him and what he taught me. This fall, I am teaching animal cognition for the first time with him gone and am feeling the loss acutely. Every year I end the class with the titular question of one of his books “Are we smart enough to know how smart animals are?” I hope that part of the legacy I pass along each year is that my students leave in awe of animal minds and with the humility of understanding our own limitations as humans in this work.
Respectfully submitted,
Malini Suchak
In Memorium:
Philip N. Lehner
By Jim Ha
Philip Nelson Lehner, 82 of Whitefish, passed away July 8, 2022 at The Springs in Whitefish Montana. Philip is survived by his son Jake Lehner.
Phil was a longtime member of the Animal Behavior Society, well-known to many members, and certainly recognized by even more as “the guy with the cowboy hat.” He graduated from Syracuse University in 1962 and spent a memorable 15 months working for the Smithsonian and Fish and Wildlife Service cataloging the vertebrate fauna of the Oceanic Pacific Islands (1964-65) while in graduate school at Utah State. He graduated with a PhD in Wildlife Science in 1967 studying the behavior of ducks, and in 1968, began a long career in the Zoology/Biology Department at Colorado State University. At CSU, he taught a number of ethology-related courses, including an excellent methods course, which resulted in the publication of his best-known work, The Handbook of Ethological Methods. While at CSU, he had several graduate students, studying behavior in coyotes (both wild at Jackson Hole WY and captive at CSU’s Maxwell Ranch), herding dogs, beagle dogs, gray jay socioecology, and Bigfoot. He hosted the ABS Annual Meeting in June of 1980. He was an accomplished hunter, fisherman, horseman, and outdoorsman in general. Phil retired from CSU in 1998, and moved to Polson MT on Flathead Lake, nearer to his son Jake. Phil remained active, pursuing fishing, snowmobiling, and an active role in the conservation of Flathead Lake by supporting the local grassroots organization with his scientific skills.
Some memories from his last two PhD students:
Suzanne Hetts:
I first learned of Dr. Lehner when I was working as a medical technologist at the Veterinary Teaching Hospital (VTH) at Colorado State University. The breeder we were buying a Dalmatian puppy from mentioned that a CSU professor had come out to her house to help Rhett - who would be our pup’s sire – and his new fear of going to dog shows. Dr. Lehner, she told me, determined it was because Rhett was always turned over to a handler at the show and he didn’t like being separated from his “mom”/owner. With my interest in companion animal behavior, I decided to track Dr. Lehner down. Turns out he was teaching an elective class on applied animal behavior to veterinary students. Because I worked at the VTH, some friendly faculty in the College of Veterinary Medicine allowed me to sit in on his class. I was immediately hooked. I quit my job soon after and applied for graduate school and Phil became my major professor for my Ph.D. During that time, we became partners in Animal Behavior Associates, Inc., (ABA) the behavior consulting firm we established to consult with people about their pets’ behavior problems. At the time (mid 1980s) applying the science of animal behavior to pets was in its infancy and people were still questioning its validity. Today with canine behavior science being mainstream, it’s clear Phil was ahead of the times. Dr. Lehner was also instrumental in the creation of the ABS’s certification program for applied animal behaviorists. He along with other ABS members including Dr. Peter Borchelt, and Dr. John Wright, worked diligently to ensure our rigorous certification program was created, even in the face of a degree of Society skepticism at the time. What I remember most about Phil were his adherence to objective observations and the scientific method, and his love of the outdoors. ABA still operates, almost 40 years later, but Phil early on scaled back from working with pet owners. He complained that pet owners too often wouldn’t follow through with his recommendations, a lament all of us still share all these years later.
James Ha:
When I arrived at Colorado State for my PhD program, I thought I was moving away from ethology and towards physiological ecology in my interests. Quite frankly, interacting with Phil Lehner and his research on Gray Jays at the time reinvigorated my interest in ethological questions, a passion which has remained with me for the rest of my career. Phil was an encouraging mentor, too hands-off for some students but I enjoyed being able to try out my ideas without a nay-saying voice in my ear. If you were passionate about it, Phil was willing to let you make your own mistakes… and claim your own victories! He was critical in helping me develop my perspective on the (ethological) world, the best job of a graduate mentor.
But perhaps even more than this, Phil helped me with improving my work-life balance. I was very serious as a student, with firm expectations of parents and spouse, a future career on the line. Phil taught me to enjoy life: Work Hard and Party Hard, perhaps. I fondly remember Colorado elk-hunting horse-packing trips, Front Range ice-fishing, sharing campfires with Phil and Drs. George, Jack, and Jim, watching meteor showers over the Rockies at our field site, taking out of town guests to cowboy bars for line-dancing and Rocky Mountain oysters, and playing horseshoes in his backyard until the wee hours. When I got re-married to Renee, we asked Phil to officiate at our wedding. Phil got ordained online, and we joked that we were married in the Church of Behavioral Ecology.
We did some great science, and we enjoyed life. Thanks, Phil!