Slashdot Mirror
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.
Most animals fight for mates. The only reason they don't kill each other is it's tougher for them to be lethal about it. But if a moose could head-butt another moose into oblivion to win a mate, I've no doubt it would do it.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
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.
This is a case where new science seems to confirm the common sense that old science was questioning. Of course chimps evolved to fight. They fight for the same reasons human tribes fight - competition for resources (including breeding females as a resource).
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
Chimpanzees live in well-defined colonies, and groups of males patrol the borders of each colony's territory. This is where violent conflicts are known to arise, particularly if a patrol encounters a single chimp from a neighbouring community - but never before has this much data on the lethality of those interactions been combined in a single study.
But that's 72 ugly virgins
Table-ized A.I.
...we'll read about chimp politicians
Table-ized A.I.
So what does this say about humans?
Should be studying bonobo behavior more than we study chmpanzees?
They are the personification of "make love not war" after all.
Yes, studying chimpanzee behaviour clearly provides a link to human behaviour... NOT!
Huh. So, they're more like humans than we first thought.
You see this from the anti-hunting and lunatic PETA crowd. "Humans are the only species that kill for pleasure or kill for reasons other than survival". Bill Maher (PETA member) said it several times last season of his Real Time show. Yet everything from orca whales to monkeys to domestic cats kills for reasons other than day-to-day survival.
They kill for fun, for the adrenaline rush, for sport, for territory, and sometimes simply out of instinct or curiosity. Cats leave trophies on their owners' back porches. They'll kill birds and mice and even bats and then leave the dead body for their owner to find. Killer whales just slaughter packs of seals for fun. Often times just killing them and not even eating them. Some animals are so naturally deadly like sharks that they cannot help killing something by simply "test" biting an animal to see if its good food. A shark bites a human but realizes the flesh is poor and there are too many bones, so it backs off for good, yet the human is dead because half his stomach and leg were chewed off entirely by the shark.
Lions and wolves will fight and kill each other. One argument I've seen is that they are at the top of the food chain so there is no other animal out there to keep their numbers in check.
In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice they're different. (Yogi Berra & A. Einstein)
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.
It's not just chimps and humans. Think hen-picking. Or think of ant guards standing guard outside a nest, they will kill any workers infected with deadly fungus then carry the body out to the graveyard where they then commit suicide. Nature has her ways. i would not be surprised if this behavior is noted in the plant kingdom as well. Then there is the Gaia hypothesis in which we could expect this "balancing" even on planetary scale.
First, it is the "origin," not now. It gives us a what-if on human behavior.
Second, they can watch chimps do things to each other that would be considered an ethical violation if a study let humans act in a similar way.
Third, humans have been studied a lot, you have to be quite creative to get another ounce out of what is already in the literature. Chimps, not studied as much, so there are more opportunities to learn stuff.
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.
Because it gives insight about early human behavior. If violence is an innate part of chimps behavior that means violence was part of our direct ancestors behavior as well and can help to explain conflicts between racial groups, religious groups, ethnic groups, etc. Basically, it helps us understand the roots of our "we vs. they" mentality.
But seriously, primate research is worthwhile on it's own. You can't directly prove connections between us and them; but that is not unlike a huge amount of science which relies upon observation, statistics and expert judgement calls. When they act similar that can be a clue or merely a coincidence but it warrants further investigation. It's a technique that allows for faster probing of the problem space. BESIDES, if you think that observing chimps influences their behavior (as the "skeptics" denier fanatics always claim) just imagine trying to study humans! Humans are way more difficult to study without influencing their behavior thereby tainting the study.
The biological connection is obvious; any "insights" they do in the research with a biological connection become useful even if at 1st they seem unjustified. The work can be applied in new ways later on if one proves there is no connection.
As far as pure human nature study by primate research; well, that is based upon theories which may or may not be proven some day in the future. You have the classic old Feud work on "base desires" which think about the primitive instinctive aspects behind the manifestations; his work in this area is the basis for modern propaganda (WW1 and really big after the Nazis used it so well. Today, it controls most consumers.) Following that success, one could approach further from that perspective - making our relation to primates and their more primitive state ideal.
Ultimately, I think most the work in the area ends up with the search for biological parallels between us. Say that HATE is really just a manifestation of FEAR; can you ever prove such a thing? nope. not in a hard science way; it's all subjective. But if you can study primates you might find more concrete proof with them on a biological level. A Turing machine is a lame computer nothing like your CPU but it's useful to prove things (the difference being that you can concretely prove the CPU is equivalent to the Turing machine and you can't with a chimp since they evolved differently even if they are nearly the same DNA.)
As far as evolutionary pressures-- the best theory for human brains was we already made it to the top of the food chain being as primitive as chimps and what made the apes of the plains smart was that they had to war against each other for resources. Just like humans have always done; my tribe and me against you and your tribe. Given how we are the most evolved distance running animals on earth, territorial borders are meaningless. Your group isn't going to give up after running down a lion to exhaustion for 20miles simply because you ended out of your usual turf.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
They are all now in the NRA
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Because when you try to study a human in it's natural habitat, they act as if they're being studied, whereas animals continue to be themselves in that same scenario. Although I don't think that animal behavior actually explains human behavior.
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
{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.
Not with monkey hands, but I'm sure the NRA can come up with a triggering mechanism they can use.
In evolution, winners win!
The world is now a more enlightened place.
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
No, they need to come up with a triggering mechanism for grizzly paws. After all, don't we have a second amendment right to armed bears?
Granted, I might need to reread that section a bit.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Humans have a hard time being objective about themselves.
This.
Kythe
My yardstick is not merely using tools, but manufacturing them, specifically using what would be considered unnatural techniques. In the example above, I referred to making a specific choice to melt metal, so that it can be poured into sword or other weapon-shaped moulds to create said weapons, to in turn be more effective at killing. This is something that our ancestors figured out how to do an untold number of years ago, going back to pre-historic times.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
If and only if said species is closely related. Socially motivated animal behaviorists have made claims about birds and then extrapolated them to humans. Very bogus.
You're still using sophistication as a yardstick. Some animals will modify a natural object to work better. Your specificity is merely a moved goal post.
That was the politically correct but baseless agenda pushed by some people. All real research over the years has shown that protecting their turf is an innate behavior, same as many other animals.
Completely depends on the animal being studied. Many animals behave very differently if they know humans are watching.
Mere modification of a natural object is not sufficient... it must be modified by unnatural means, which means specifically employing something outside of one's own natural capabilities to make something more fit for purpose than it otherwise would be, which in the case of smelting and making cast weapons, would be fire.
Call that a moved goalpost if you want to, but I never laid any claim to any other standard. Human ancestors leaned how to control fire to achieve productive ends over a hundred thousand years ago... so I'd suggest that the actual goalpost was set in pre-history. Besides, somebody asked where my yardstick was... challenging it by suggesting that any logical similarity to a less specific form of measurement should automatically make a concept with higher standards is somehow equivalent to a lower standard one is fallacious.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
"Ape don't kill ape" - Caesar 2014
it must be modified by unnatural means
"Unnatural means" is extremely ill-defined, and in common understanding it's by unavailable to nonhumans *by definition*, not because of a shortcoming of the animals. You look up antonyms for "natural" and one of the first is "man-made".
Fire is a particularly interesting choice of discriminator, because it is a natural phenomenon that happens all the time. You of course mean a contained fire that was intentionally instigated by chimpanzees.
Regardless, I'm missing the point of this argument -- you said to wake you up when they invented smelting, and then talked about what your yardstick was, but I don't know what it's a yardstick for.
If some creature, without having been ever been trained or taught how to do it by a human being, formed a weapon-shaped mould out of plaster or ceramic, and then went and melted down some metal to get it into a liquid state, which it would pour into the mould, and waited for the molten metal to solidify before trying to use it as a weapon that is more effective than what they can do with their natural limbs, then I would say that the weapon was produced by non-natural mean, whether or not it was a human being that was doing it, and honestly, I don't know how anyone else could claim otherwise. At some point in prehistoric times, human beings figured out how to do this on their own, after all.
You are right about fire being an interesting discriminator, because although fire certainly happens naturally all the time, it seems that only human beings actually contain and explicitly employ it for any kind of productive use. Also interestingly, humans have been controlling fire for over a hundred thousand years for a variety of purposes, so one might want to ask why haven't other species started doing it by now too? *THAT* would be a revolutionary discovery... noticing that apes might like to murder eachother because it has some measurable evolutionary benefit is just... well... meh.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Unfortunately people on this planet have used the excuse of a "lack of resources" to justify some of the most amoral and unspeakable actions. We shouldn't be motivated to leave this rock simply because we need more "resources" but because we would like to participate in a meaningful way with the universe.
"...because we would like to participate in a meaningful way with the universe"
The universe does not care and is not capable of judging our intentions or how "meaningful" (what's the measurement criteria? who decides what's meaningful?) our actions are
Stop anthropomorphizing.
You are correct that many conflicts result from competition for resources. The universe has almost infinite resources, so having cheap & plentiful resources available would tend to greatly mitigate resource-driven human conflicts.
At the very least, it will drive the conflicts away from the planet.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
Completely depends on the animal being studied. Many animals behave very differently if they know humans are watching.
Very true. However animals do not have the ability to go beyond their own nature. I mean to say, regardless of how happy your dog is to see you, it will not stop it from licking it's ass when need-be. Whereas humans will generally not even pick their nose in front of others.
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
Machiavellianism (willingness to manipulate and deceive others), narcissism (egotism and self-obsession), psychopathy (the lack of remorse and empathy), and sadism (pleasure in the suffering of others).
Casteism
It took roughly 2 million years after we diverged from proto-hominids to develop smelting. Along that 2 million years our lineage passed through the development stages we see now in Chimps and other modern primates. Due to the physiological changes our line experienced through 2000 centuries our line has advanced in ways this planet has never seen before. And yet there are creatures following their own lines on this planet that, long before Sol turns into a red giant might have their moment and long after we have ceased to be the top of the planetary food chain.
This planet has seen much more devastating disruption than Homo Sapiens, and were we to drive ourselves extinct there would be other organisms that show signs of getting to where we are in a very distant future.
I don't worry much for this blue green ball. But right now, it sucks to be human, knowing what we know, and knowing what we don't know.
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.
Because the ones performing the study can not shut their mouths and open their minds while observing other humans.
The reason why they can not do this is because of what they might out about their own selves.
Because the people who would listen to the scientist performing the work do not want to hear what the scientist may say.
The reason they do not want to hear what the scientist has to say is because they do not want to find out about their own selves.
Essentially, there is a scary dark entity inside of all of us. We would be shocked, shocked I say, to find out that we could revel in killing and sex (amongst other things) indiscriminately.
Very few people want to look in a mirror and see their own soul laid bare.
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
Not with monkey hands, but I'm sure the NRA can come up with a triggering mechanism they can use.
Monkeys do have opposable thumbs. Chimpanze hands would work just fine. Many modern guns can be configured for different size hands.
But don't give them ideas they don't already have. It could be dangerous... 8-P