They may lack empathy and compassion, but that doesn't mean they are all that different from the rest of us in other respects – and that we can't learn from them, both in terms of what they're doing right, and what they're getting wrong.
And as some of the negative reactions showed, pictures of suffering can trigger not simply empathy and a desire to help, but also anger at the way that the people at the frontline of famine and conflict are represented.
"Monkeys certainly have emotions and probably the ability to display empathy," Heinrich says.
Still, Johnson advocates more empathy than political brutality: "I believe that when talented people have something to offer a society and a community they should be given the benefit of the doubt".
In a range of studies by organisations including IBM, Gerzema, Young & Rubicam, and Zenger and Folkman, senior executives around the world and across industries put qualities such as creativity, flexibility, empathy, patience, humility and balance right at the top of the list of crucial leadership characteristics for the future.
I have always tried to maintain an empathy with the healthcare professionals on the frontline and to never lose sight of the fact that the NHS exists, not to make a financial return, but to improve the health of the patients.
It's concerning to me that we have an ideologically driven prime minister who has no empathy for the wonder of the natural world, from our reefs to our rainforests.
It was empathy that turned him into a politician when, in his gap year, he was manager of Mtabila refugee camp, overseeing 120,000 Burundi refugees.
"Politicians running for office in the upcoming March elections should not only demonstrate their empathy but finally take some responsibility for this tragedy," she said.
"Not a lot of footballers have been under that type of pressure, and come out of it at the other end still a bloody effing human being, still having empathy and still wanting to help people.
Despite the steady drip-drip of death, the Mediterranean story has yet to resonate with a European public short on empathy: Guardian stories on migration on our website consistently attract very low numbers of readers.
