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First lethal attacks by chimpanzees on gorillas observed

mpg.de

61–70 of 128 posts

Re: First lethal attacks by chimpanzees on gorillas observed

#61
post #13

> "Whether this behavior is due to competition for food or to the decline of the rainforest's productivity caused by climate change will now be investigated in more detail." Declaring the cause must be food competition or climate change seems a bit hasty? These are complex social animals. Given this is the only attack ever observed, it seems possible to me that there are a myriad of plausible one-off explanations. Pe…

They are not declaring that. The proposed cause is a thesis that will be investigated further and could very well be disproven. I don't see what's wrong with that.

I'm not sure how the thesis could possibly be disproven. Interviews with the apes?

Re: First lethal attacks by chimpanzees on gorillas observed

#62
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just split the monolith into several smaller repos.

IDK, someone is just going to argue it should be packed back into a monolith over and over. Despite there clearly being no right answer.

The right answer is whoever has more people on their side. Weird. I guess this is exactly how those chimps went after a lone gorilla.

May the victors write our history.

Re: First lethal attacks by chimpanzees on gorillas observed

#63

Joe Rogan needs to know about this as soon as possible. The guy loves talking about chimps on his show.

I’d like to keep Rogan at peace and not indulge him with this. The man has a family and a career, and the last thing he needs is to open up the Chimpanzee addiction.

Besides, the Covid lab leak theory is plenty to keep that weirdo going for awhile.

Re: First lethal attacks by chimpanzees on gorillas observed

#64
post #13

> "Whether this behavior is due to competition for food or to the decline of the rainforest's productivity caused by climate change will now be investigated in more detail." Declaring the cause must be food competition or climate change seems a bit hasty? These are complex social animals. Given this is the only attack ever observed, it seems possible to me that there are a myriad of plausible one-off explanations. Pe…

You have to tie your research to the popular causes of the day. It would a bit far-fetched to tie it to gender and underrepresented minorities or online misinformation or covid, so the nearest possible "serious issue of our time" is climate change.

Re: First lethal attacks by chimpanzees on gorillas observed

#65
post #13

> "Whether this behavior is due to competition for food or to the decline of the rainforest's productivity caused by climate change will now be investigated in more detail." Declaring the cause must be food competition or climate change seems a bit hasty? These are complex social animals. Given this is the only attack ever observed, it seems possible to me that there are a myriad of plausible one-off explanations. Pe…

>> Declaring the cause must be food competition or climate change seems a bit hasty?

It's not a declaration, but a hypothesis that attempts to explain the observations according to prior knowledge. It "will now be investigated in more detail" to try and disprove it. That's bog standard scientific work.

What's hasty is the easy dismissal of the opinion of experts on a subject most commenters here are probably unfamliar with (interspecies interactions between non-human primates) and the attemps to find an ulterior motive of some kind of political nature, in comments in this thread.

When did HN become so anti-science?

Re: First lethal attacks by chimpanzees on gorillas observed

#66
post #58

I remember once watching a documentary on a roving band of chimpanzees, and thinking how human they looked. I was shocked when they attacked another band of chimpanzees and killed them all. However, I quickly overcame my shock. They were quite human indeed...

Did they touch a black monolith right after?

Re: First lethal attacks by chimpanzees on gorillas observed

#67
post #58

I remember once watching a documentary on a roving band of chimpanzees, and thinking how human they looked. I was shocked when they attacked another band of chimpanzees and killed them all. However, I quickly overcame my shock. They were quite human indeed...

Even monkeys (those that are not apes) exhibit behavior that so powerfully human. One campus where I studied had many (curb the joke). This allowed enough opportunities to observe them.

What moved me most, apart from their usual monkey business, is their display of quiet private tenderness towards their partner. That took me by surprise.

Everyone has some personal experiences that they would remember because it changed their perspective or added one when non existed. This would be one of them for me.

A family friend of ours was researcher in medical biology. His daily work included draining blood from rhesus monkeys for testing. I remember as a kid that he gave up his line of work. At that time it had struck me as an odd thing to do because he was doing so well. When I saw the behavior of these monkeys from up close, I got a better appreciation of why.

Re: First lethal attacks by chimpanzees on gorillas observed

#68
post #57

From the videos, it looks like the human observers were about ten meters away. That made me wonder how risky filming this is. Google didn’t give me cases of attacks on observers, but it did give me https://observers.france24.com/en/20120926-midst-armed-confl... , so I think those observers are at some risk. It also taught me chimpanzee wars exist ( https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22229682-600-only-kno... )

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gombe_Chimpanzee_War

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer_ape_theory

Re: First lethal attacks by chimpanzees on gorillas observed

#69
post #13

> "Whether this behavior is due to competition for food or to the decline of the rainforest's productivity caused by climate change will now be investigated in more detail." Declaring the cause must be food competition or climate change seems a bit hasty? These are complex social animals. Given this is the only attack ever observed, it seems possible to me that there are a myriad of plausible one-off explanations. Pe…

>> Declaring the cause must be food competition or climate change seems a bit hasty? It's not a declaration, but a hypothesis that attempts to explain the observations according to prior knowledge. It "will now be investigated in more detail" to try and disprove it. That's bog standard scientific work. What's hasty is the easy dismissal of the opinion of experts on a subject most commenters here are probably unfamlia…

You don’t need any expertise at all to notice that there might be more than two possible explanations for this thing that has now been observed a total of one times.

Re: First lethal attacks by chimpanzees on gorillas observed

#70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've turned climate change into the new boogeyman, which is a shame since it's an important issue.

Give it few more weeks of research and they'll blame it on covid.

Maybe the Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro...
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