This is simultaneously really cool and really sad.
Gombe Chimpanzee War
21–30 of 43 posts
Re: Gombe Chimpanzee War
#22I went to a talk by Lawrence Freedman [1] in Oxford where he discussed this war. He has a chapter dedicated to it in his book 'Strategy: A History' [2] (which I highly recommend).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Freedman [2] https://www.amazon.co.uk/Strategy-History-Sir-Lawrence-Freed...
Re: Gombe Chimpanzee War
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm pretty sure they're objecting specifically to the "relatively small numbers" part; I probably wouldn't call a conflict involving only 14 humans a "war" either, culture or no culture.
Maybe a "feud" a la the Hatfield & McCoy?
Anthropologists do sometimes use the terms "feuds", "blood feuds", or "raiding" for this type of conflict in small groups of humans.
Re: Gombe Chimpanzee War
#24Along the same lines (but with a different species) the story of the Mapoogo lion coalition is fascinating https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mapogo_lion_coalition It has been made into a fascinating documentary: Brothers in Blood: The Lions of Sabi Sand https://www.amazon.com/Brothers-Blood-Lions-Sabi-Sand/dp/B07... (you can also find the video online for free if you search for it)
Yes, lots of great clips about lion behavior from BBC and NatGeo on youtube, as well as (mostly nonviolent) scenes captured by safari leaders like Rob the Ranger.
Lions are incredibly savage toward "the other"; no intra-species solidarity seems to exist, though there are incidents of strangers forming coalitions even though they didn't grow up together.
Chimps increasingly are being reported to be somewhat violent and are known to commit murder; cannibalism and rape also are not uncommon.
It's not clear, whether this behavior is continuous throughout their history as a species, or has come to be more common because of the pressure of human encroachment and the reduction in their population. At one time there were millions of chimpanzees in Africa, and today there are maybe 300,000 left in the wild.
Re: Gombe Chimpanzee War
#25Off-topic.
Re: Gombe Chimpanzee War
#26Considering that Chimps have reached stone age, it will be interesting to see if Chimps use any weaponns if such a war happens again. http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150818-chimps-living-in-the...
They're smashing heavy rocks against nuts... Surely there's a huge difference between carving a weapon and finding a rock large enough to smash open a nut.
Well, to be fair, our Stone Age did take 3 million years to complete.
Re: Gombe Chimpanzee War
#27Considering that Chimps have reached stone age, it will be interesting to see if Chimps use any weaponns if such a war happens again. http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150818-chimps-living-in-the...
Maybe you missed this line: old Rodolf, usually so benign, standing upright to hurl a four-pound rock at Godi's prostrate body
Re: Gombe Chimpanzee War
#28After reading many, many stories about the absolute horrors of the natural world, I have such a difficult time understanding a belief in a benevolent god. After all, it is trivially easy to imagine a universe with less suffering (but perhaps still enough hardship to drive inquisitive and motivational behaviors), so the presence of so much unnecessary horror in nature leads me to believe either (a) God is a sadist or (b) natural selection in the face of scare resources is what causes this pain.
One of my favorite (or, rather, terror-inducing) examples is the parasitic emerald wasp, which uses its paralyzing sting to turn a cockroach into a "zombie" so it can drag it by its antenna into a burrow, then lay eggs on the roach, and when the larvae hatch they proceed to eat the roach, but in a specific order so that the organs necessary for survival are eaten last. Queen Cersei from Game of Thrones couldn't come up with more nightmare-inducing torture.
Re: Gombe Chimpanzee War
#29After reading many, many stories about the absolute horrors of the natural world, I have such a difficult time understanding a belief in a benevolent god. After all, it is trivially easy to imagine a universe with less suffering (but perhaps still enough hardship to drive inquisitive and motivational behaviors), so the presence of so much unnecessary horror in nature leads me to believe either (a) God is a sadist or…
or a more obvious conclusion - god/gods just doesn’t exists
Re: Gombe Chimpanzee War
#30I would hardly describe a conflict involving a total of 14 adult male chimps a "war".
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