'Ha, ha, ha, it's like Dad and Mum at night, when Dad bothers Mum and she gives a few blows in return'. Here is an example of what .Véronique Servais, an anthropologist at the University of Liège's Institute of Human and Social Sciences, was able to pick up on during her study of peoples' reactions when face to face with zoo primates. It is a vast programme just trying to understand why, despite this type of spontaneous coming together between animals and humans, we continue to think that there is a rigid boundary between the animal condition and the human condition. In reality, these rapprochements are so many cases of anthropomorphism. In other words, and as occurs in the present example, the attribution of typically human mental qualities on the basis of observing primate behaviour. 'But anthropomorphism has nothing to do with empathy,' emphasizes Véronique Servais from the start. 'The specific nature of human beings pushes them to want to interpret the intentions behind behaviour, to want to give meaning to what is going on around them, to render what surrounds them intelligible and to reduce the unknown to the familiar.' But there are two ways of looking for intentions. As a visitor, we will either take into consideration the intentions we perceive, and thus in a way bring the animal back towards us, or we will be interested in what the animal wants. In the case of anthropomorphism, human beings try to explain observed behaviour by bringing it back within their own criteria, without really trying to understand why the animal is behaving in such a way. 'In the interaction with animals, anthropomorphism is ethnocentrism. Empathy on the other hand involves a change of perspective: seeing things from the point of view of the Other. Empathy presupposes a reorganisation of perception and the discovery of a new point of view.   As far as animals are concerned, empathy rests on a good knowledge of their natural history, of their behavioural repertoire and of their system of communication. All of that is required to begin to see how animals live in their world, necessarily different to ours. Anthropomorphism involves bringing back the different to the known. If there was empathy in these interpretations, a real desire to understand the meanings of animal behaviour 'from their point of view,' we would be incensed by the zoo system, by animals in captivity;'