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Chimpanzees in Uganda locked in eight-year 'civil war', say researchers

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Re: Chimpanzees in Uganda locked in eight-year 'civil war', say researchers

#101

Post by card_zero »

mike_hearn wrote: post #46

> If chimpanzees - one of the species closest to humans genetically - could do so without human constructs of religion, ethnicity and political beliefs, then "relational dynamics may play a larger causal role in human conflict than often assumed", they added. That's a weird thing to say. Studies of primitive tribes showed decades ago that they only seem to fight each other for a handful of reasons. Religion, ethnicit…

It's probably all about genes: my genes say I have to kill you now because you aren't spreading my genes. This might be a component of human ethnic violence, but not a strong one, since we can think thoughts, such as that would be a shitty thing to do.

Re: Chimpanzees in Uganda locked in eight-year 'civil war', say researchers

#102

Post by xorgun »

OgsyedIE wrote: post #32

The primatologist Richard Wrangam once advanced the theory that tribe vs. tribe conspecific homicides - what he called coalitionary killing - are an evolved trait that was selected for in primates by some kind of pro-homicide selection pressures in the ancestral environment (where homicide reliably grants an advantage to the expected relative gene frequency of the perpetrator's genes). I haven't kept up with biology…

[dead]

Re: Chimpanzees in Uganda locked in eight-year 'civil war', say researchers

#103

Post by EA-3167 »

card_zero wrote: post #95
EA-3167 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Murder is a crime, homicide is the act. A lion doesn’t murder because it isn’t capable of breaking human law, but it can sure commit a homicide.

Not on a gazelle. The great apes are at least hominids, so I can't complain about it being called "homicide", but a gazelle gets ... bovicide?

I'm not sure that the word formally exists yet, which implies that if you can popularize it then you could be first to the punch!

"My God, look at the hooves, this was bovicide without any doubt."

Re: Chimpanzees in Uganda locked in eight-year 'civil war', say researchers

#104

Post by globalnode »

fascinating. so if humans are more like chimpanzees than not, then we are a group based animal that distrusts/fears other groups unless some strong leaders are able to bridge the gap? its an over simplification but then you have to ask, what defines a group? language? location? appearance? religion? wrt politicians, their job should be (amongst other things), bridging gaps between groups, instead of what we see going on in the world now.

Re: Chimpanzees in Uganda locked in eight-year 'civil war', say researchers

#105

Post by mckirk »

hn_acc1 wrote: post #91

So wait - after a respiratory virus, let's call it SARS-C, that killed > 10% (25/200 = 12.5%) of their population, they split into two major groups that are now at each other's throats, when before they had a generally-ok alliance / relationship? Where have I seen this before.. Think.. Think..

I mean, it's understandable; having to endure a lockdown _with_ Doordash was really rough on our civilization.

Re: Chimpanzees in Uganda locked in eight-year 'civil war', say researchers

#106

Post by ozim »

Sharlin wrote: post #43
londons_explore wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems obvious to me - it's the combination of two ideas: 1. When competing for resources, killing your neighbour frees up resources, which you can take. Most species of animal and even plants do this to some extent. 2. By collaborating in a group, you can achieve more than individuals acting alone. This is the idea behind teams, companies, countries, etc. Combine the two ideas, and you get war.

It's definitely not obvious, given that many, many gregarious species may certainly have inter-group clashes and skirmishes at territory boundaries but no full-scale war. Animals in general avoid violence between conspecifics, for the obvious reason that it's rarely worth the risk of being hurt unless you're very sure you're going to win. Dying for your group is something you almost never see outside eusocial species…

dying in your prime reproductive age!

I guess dying because you think you’re going to impress’s a mate and stay alive is quite common.

Re: Chimpanzees in Uganda locked in eight-year 'civil war', say researchers

#107

Post by beloch »

"The third factor was the deaths of 25 chimpanzees, including four adult males and 10 adult females, as a result of a respiratory epidemic, in 2017, a year before the final separation. One of the adult males who died was "among the last individuals to connect the groups", the research paper said."

-------------

There's a theory that humans (and likely chimps as well) have a cognitive upper limit to the number of stable relationships they can maintain (i.e. Dunbar's number[1]). Also, there is the idea that most people have nowhere near that many relationships, but some people are super connectors. They know everyone in the community and tie it together, even if the average member of the community doesn't know most other people in it.

It almost sounds like, before the conflict, the tribe was at or a little beyond their "Dunbar's number"[1] and then several of their super-connectors died. Suddenly the community, despite its losses, was too big and not connected enough to remain stable. Minor conflicts arose, individuals started choosing sides, and there wasn't anyone with connections to both sides able to bridge the gap and calm things down.

I'm not a sociologist/anthropologist/etc., so I'm probably woefully misinformed and spewing nonsense here. I'd love to hear what someone up to date on this stuff thinks actually happened.

_______________________

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar's_number

Re: Chimpanzees in Uganda locked in eight-year 'civil war', say researchers

#108

Post by delichon »

throwaway27448 wrote: post #85
delichon wrote: post #5

I hope nobody decides to violate the prime directive and take sides in the chimp war. To the extent that they have good memory, they live in a world of finite resources, and their behavior was shaped by the forces of game theory as applied to tribes, this is more or less inevitable. You can read that as defeatism or just math. We can't overcome the force of game theory, but we can make it work for us by making our tr…

> We can't overcome the force of game theory Game theory isn't a force. It's just one way of modeling behavior through one sense of rationality, and it rarely maps neatly onto actual human behavior.

It may be easier to think of evolution as the force, and game theory strongly influencing the fitness test. Those who play the games of mating and predator/prey more optimally reproduce more. We descend from billions of generations of the winners.

Re: Chimpanzees in Uganda locked in eight-year 'civil war', say researchers

#109

Post by [deleted] »

shimman wrote: post #31
jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd suggest reading some David Graeber. Viewing everything through the lens of game theory, as if it was some physical law, is very much off the mark.

Great comment. Dawn of Everything changed a lot how I viewed early humanity.

[deleted]

Re: Chimpanzees in Uganda locked in eight-year 'civil war', say researchers

#110

Post by hellojimbo »

bluegatty wrote: post #64
londons_explore wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems obvious to me - it's the combination of two ideas: 1. When competing for resources, killing your neighbour frees up resources, which you can take. Most species of animal and even plants do this to some extent. 2. By collaborating in a group, you can achieve more than individuals acting alone. This is the idea behind teams, companies, countries, etc. Combine the two ideas, and you get war.

Yes, but war is worse for all parties generally. Lions murdering prey to eat is a stable equilibrium. Primates fighting each other is not. Murdering for acquisition of a resource is short term advantage. We are strongly, strongly evolutionary oriented away from 'murder' - it's the original sin. It's not something we even argue over. Murder = Bad. No disagreement across cultures. Murder = social cheating. No disagreem…

How can it be that groups pay for it long term when many of the successful apex predators exhibit interspecies murder and territorialism.

Just to use your own example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mapogo_lion_coalition

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