This is an undercover investigation of the evolution and economics of human relationships. Tracking us in lifts and on emails, at home and at work, a leading primatologist uncovers the rules that govern the social life of the human animal. Most of us don't realize that when we exchange emails with someone - anyone - we are actually exhibiting certain unspoken rules about dominance and hierarchy. 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. In Games Primates Play, 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. As he realizes, everything from how we write emails to how we make love is determined by the legacy of our primate roots and the conditions that existed so long ago. An idiosyncratic and witty approach to our deep and complex origins, Games Primates Play reveals the ways in which our primate nature drives so much of our lives.