The Arrogant Ape

The Myth of Human Exceptionalism and Why It Matters

By: Christine Webb

Narrated by: Christine Webb

A New York Times’s Notable Book of 2025

An impassioned celebration of humility before the living world that leads us to a new understanding of other species—and ourselves

Darwin considered humans one part of the web of life, not the apex of a natural hierarchy. Yet today many maintain that we are the most intelligent, virtuous, successful species that ever lived. This flawed thinking enables us to exploit the earth towards our own exclusive ends, throwing us into a perilous planetary imbalance. But is this view and way of life inevitable? The Arrogant Ape shows that human exceptionalism is an ideology that relies more on human culture than our biology, more on delusion and faith than on evidence.

Harvard primatologist Christine Webb has spent years researching the rich social, emotional, and cognitive lives of our closest living relatives. She exposes the ways that many scientific studies are biased against other species and reveals underappreciated complexities of nonhuman life—from the language of songbirds and prairie dogs, to the cultures of chimpanzees and reef fishes, to the acumen of plants and fungi. With compelling stories and fresh research she gives us a paradigm-shifting way of looking at other organisms on their own terms, one that is revolutionizing our perception both of them and of ourselves.

Critiques of human exceptionalism tend to focus on our moral obligation towards other species. They overlook what humanity also stands to gain by dismantling its illusions of uniqueness and superiority. This shift in perspective fills us with a sense of awe and satisfies one of our oldest and deepest desires to belong to the larger whole we inhabit. What’s at stake is a better, sustainable way of life with the potential to heal and rejuvenate our shared planet.

Probably one of the most important books written...about the egotistical human being.

This is so important, it's imperative for the survival, freedom and success of our closest relatives: from primates to orcas.

excellent!

Detailed and complete understanding of the subject. well told .. easy to understand! An accomplished educator.

Well done.

I very much enjoyed this book. I wish everyone would read/listen to it. There is much to learn here.

A new voice!

Excellent book that I thoroughly enjoyed. Her point of view is something I've always felt but never had the words.

much needed perspective

This book is a criticism of the anthropocentric world view that is at the heart of so many of our problems. Through stories and personal anecdotes, philosophical analysis, and biological and ecological facts, the author eases us away from our human arrogance. Highly recommended.