*This truism is changing. In 2004 a landmark paper chronicled the social modification of what are usually considered hardwired traits among baboons. Dominant male baboons are normally highly aggressive, harassing and attacking females and low-ranking males to climb the social ladder. But one troupe of baboons in Kenya suffered a unique catastrophe: Its most aggressive males— dominant alphas who had, with typical belligerence, claimed the exclusive right to forage in a nearby garbage dump—had eaten some discarded meat tainted with bovine tuberculosis and promptly died. The remaining group members, consisting of subordinate males who’d lost out on the brawls over garbage goodies, together with all the females and their children, had undergone, in the words of New York Times science journalist Natalie Angier, “a cultural swing toward pacifism, a relaxing of the usually parlous baboon hierarchy, and a willingness to use affection and mutual grooming rather than threats, swipes and bites...” This shift toward distinctly more bonobian-sounding social relations has now persisted for two decades, even though the original kinder-and-gentler male survivors have either died or drifted away. New males who join the group seem to absorb the unusual norms. One scientist expressed amazement that it was not merely a change in a rote behavior—in, say, a way of cracking nuts—that was being transmitted, but “an attitude...the social ethos of the group.” The implications for human culture can scarcely be overstated. “If baboons can do it,” as Frans de Waal put it, “why not us?”