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Study: Chimpanzees Have Evolved To Kill Each Other
sciencehabit writes A major new study of warfare in chimpanzees finds that lethal aggression can be evolutionarily beneficial in that species, rewarding the winners with food, mates, and the opportunity to pass along their genes. The findings run contrary to recent claims that chimps fight only if they are stressed by the impact of nearby human activity—and could help explain the origins of human conflict as well.
What a load of PC "humans are the only baddies in the world" bollocks.
Chimpanzees have a well documented history of intra-group hierarchical violence, violence against females and extra-group murdering raids. This is nothing new. Anthropologists have known this stuff for decades.
I would like to hear somebody explain logically why they think the behavior of other modern non-human species provides more insight into human behavior, than simply studying human behavior directly.
There is no such thing as "right" or "wrong" in nature and no delusions of morality can change that.
What about the bullying that goes on in single sex schools?
Here's the funny thing folks, humans are animals too!
As far as anyone can tell humans have a much greater ability to engage in complex planning: to make decisions based on sophisticated predictions of future consequences from an array of different actions. If you're hanging out with your friend in your living room and he has to go to the bathroom, most likely he'll make some initial assessments of his options, gather more information to increase the accuracy of his predictions: "Would you mind if I used your bathroom? Actually, better use the one off the master bedroom the one down the hall isn't flushing very well these days.", and then act on his predictions. On the other hand, if you have a horse over to hang out in your living room then pretty soon you'll be up to your ankles in horse manure.
We have all the same urges and evolutionary pressures,...
Except that with our complex planning it's actually easy to satisfy our evolutionary urges without needing to resort to violence. And we're also able to realize that evolution is a natural law like gravity. That having children in order to be evolutionarily successful is like throwing oneself down a flight of stairs in order to be gravitationally successful - that evolution isn't what should happen - it's what does happen.
...a brain big enough to develop ... violence ... to fill the hole that our self abstinence from murder has left.
No. People engage in violence when they're not able to find any other way to satisfy their (evolutionary) needs. Typically, the people who engage in violence are the ones with the brains that are too "small" - which isn't to say that smart people are never backed into a corner where violence is the only option. But most people who use violence do so because they are unable to make good predictions about all the possible actions and consequences available to them.
{Wake me when chimpanzees invent smelting} ... and cast weapons made of metal from molds that they manufactured themselves, just so they can kill more effectively.
Hard to tell what point(s) you're attempting to make here.
So, is killing efficiency your yardstick?
I don't see how efficiency relates. Heck, there are species of marine life who eat the egg-clusters and hatchlings of their competitors, and that's upwards of tens of thousands or more.
Or is it the use of tools to kill?
Chimps and other apes will often pick up a branch to swing at another when they are angry/aggressive. Other examples of tool-use by apes is abundant. Google will supply you with examples.
Seems in that regard the only difference is the level of sophistication of the tools/weapons related to the differing complex intellectual levels of the two species.
No doubt if apes had a similar size brain and intellectual capability as humans, the technical level of their weapons would rise as well.
Many people like to attribute some sort of "perfect moral innocence" to animals while humans are somehow forever separate from animals and that all human effects upon animals are "unnatural" and inherently bad and wrong. They also tend to decry human behaviors that have roots in our animal nature as somehow evil and unnatural.
It's an emotional response motivated by compassion and I appreciate that. However, humans are just as natural on Earth as deer or whales. Everything will always effect everything else, and species will go extinct and new species arise as long as life exists.
Since our self-awareness and intelligence and ability to control our environment allows us to avoid natural systems of regulation, we must consciously choose to find a balance between not causing undue harm to animals and nature while not placing undue limitations on the advancement of humanity towards moving outwards into space.
Earth is not a perpetual-motion machine, and we need to leave the cradle. Humanity cannot afford to hunker down, slow progress, and ration out ever-dwindling resources. That's a recipe for extinction.
Balance is the key.
Balance will not be found at the extremes.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.