Chimpanzees in Uganda locked in eight-year 'civil war', say researchers • Hacker News Board

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

#181

Post by seer » Sat, Apr 11, 2026, 7:02 AM UTC

toivo wrote: post #170

bluegatty wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Among the Yanomami (per Napoleon Chagnon), killing outsiders was not “murder,” it raised status. Men who killed had more wives. Violence was cyclical and regulated, not collapse. Humans are not universally anti-killing, mainly in-group. That pressure kept population density low and groups mobile. Less surplus, less accumulation, weaker incentives for technological scaling. Over ~10,000+ years this maintained a relati…

“The weirdest people in the world” - has a very good roots cause analysis of all this.

Basically banding into groups and guarding against outsiders is the default human behaviour. It just works that way if you do a game theory analysis of our social structures. They usually don’t scale too well, but that’s what we revolved to do as social creatures.

It’s actually and very counter intuitively the Catholic Church that lead us to individualism, common laws, nationalism, even the Industrial Revolution and the scientific method.

It sounds bizarre but if you follow the historical logic, in a round about way it has paved the way for the modern world, which the rest of human civilisation was forced to adopt, either to compete or at gunpoint.

There are few books I read in a year that change the way I look at the world, “The Weirdest people in the world” was definitely one of them.

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

#182

Post by adsweedler » Sat, Apr 11, 2026, 7:09 AM UTC

hellojimbo wrote: post #110

bluegatty wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Wow. I just read that whole wikipedia article and had a fantastic time. Thank you very much for sharing

But to comment on your point: species DO pay for it in the long term when members murder or teratorialism.

Lions are not cannibals. Some lions are cannibals. A successful group of lions cannibals existing (and what a brutal and awesome-in-the-biblical-sense story it is!) does not mean that it pays for the lion species as a whole to have groups of cannibals existing.

In fact, I could only see the “proliferation of groups like this committing atrocities” reach a tipping point for a species - not murdering when this murdering happens will make you cease to exist. So if the species doesn’t have a reason to reach the extreme where this NEVER happens, then it will quickly reach the point where this ALWAYS happens

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

#183

Post by bluegatty » Sat, Apr 11, 2026, 7:10 AM UTC

toivo wrote: post #170

bluegatty wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Among the Yanomami (per Napoleon Chagnon), killing outsiders was not “murder,” it raised status. Men who killed had more wives. Violence was cyclical and regulated, not collapse. Humans are not universally anti-killing, mainly in-group. That pressure kept population density low and groups mobile. Less surplus, less accumulation, weaker incentives for technological scaling. Over ~10,000+ years this maintained a relati…

Yes, good point. But generally, that's not the case. Though what you hint at is a bit more present in all cultures than what we would like to admit.

As far as 'population stability' though ... quite a lot of systems achieved this kind of stability without quite the same kind of social order.

But good point.

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

#184

Post by rapidaneurism » Sat, Apr 11, 2026, 7:11 AM UTC

EA-3167 wrote: post #82

lo_zamoyski wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would caution against the use of "murder" so loosely. Lions don't murder their prey. They kill their prey. Murder occurs when one entity with personhood intentional kills another entity with personhood, where personhood is rooted in the ability to comprehend reality (intellect) and the ability to make free choices among comprehended alternatives (free choice). "Murder" thus has a moral dimension that mere killing d…

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.

I think that 'hom' in homicide stands for homo so killing of (hu)man. I read your comment as lions committing homicide on hyenas which I'm sure you don't mean.

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

#185

Post by adsweedler » Sat, Apr 11, 2026, 7:15 AM UTC

krapp wrote: post #83

bluegatty wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

[flagged]

Murder is a synonym for kill but you can differentiate between them to make a point that one particular instance of such a caused-death is worse. Is more reprehensible.

The semantics of the word are as fluid as the opinions of those who you are trying to explain the situation to, using such distinctions.

If you think the death was wrong, it is a murder. If you think the death was right, it was a murder, killing, assassination, or any such word. Language is obviously not as black and white as the example I gave, but the point stands.

I agree with your definition but think it’s too narrow, and thus missing the point of the original argument. I don’t agree with lo_zamoysk‘s original point. I think lions CAN murder. I think when they commit cannibalism it’s only when they murder other lions. All other deaths lions cause, lion or other animal, are killings (maybe murder maybe not). But when Lion A kills and eats Lion B, Lion A would have much preferred to get food another way. It’s a lot more likely Lion A is motivated by something other than hunger, like so many of Lion A’s - or even any Lion’s - kills are.

Motivations are required for murder. The word “murder” ascribes motivation to a killing.

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

#186

Post by rapidaneurism » Sat, Apr 11, 2026, 7:17 AM UTC

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…

Don't think of it as individuals, but as individual genes. A group of 10 with the same genes, that can eliminate a group of 10 with different genes by losing one individual (because they were fighting to the death, while their opponents did not) is 9 copies up.

An alternative view is that in groups with alphas that father most offspring, and status is based on the individual's ability to risk death. Genes in an individual of low status are already 'dead' so manufacturing instincts and hormonal responses that increase violence does not have a downside.

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

#187

Post by Epa095 » Sat, Apr 11, 2026, 7:22 AM UTC

everdrive wrote: post #117

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…

Back in the old days people were much more unabashed about such things. What's the purpose of your very small collection of city states? Obviously to expand, and smash any neighboring states. If you succeed, kill all the men and take their women as slaves. This was much of civilization for a long time.

Tja, IAMNAH, but my impression is that there is much more diversity to history than that. Not all groups attempted to expand, and among those who did there are many who swallowed up close by groups without violence (rather through 'cultural victory' so to say). It might even be the norm historically.

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

#188

Post by adsweedler » Sat, Apr 11, 2026, 7:27 AM UTC

dontlikeyoueith wrote: post #97

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.

> 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. If anything, I'd say plants do it more. Everything in the garden is trying to kill everything else.

Sometimes they do it in their own species, but much more commonly they do it across species. Eucalyptus will kill all but eucalyptus. Redwood trees will form networks and help each other; even an albino redwood tree (no chlorophyll https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/white-wond...) can survive.

A plant that killed all offshoots of itself would not survive. But plants much more often make perfect genetic copies than animals do, so the selfish gene can explain this behavior

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

#189

Post by adsweedler » Sat, Apr 11, 2026, 7:30 AM UTC

hetman wrote: post #177

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.

Except in this instance the conflict erupted after the population size was reduced due to disease so it's not entirely clear this was caused by the scarcity of resources. Nor is it clear what selective advantage mutually destructive wars would have assuming plenty of resources. The researchers posit group relational dynamics being the primary factor.

Scarcity of resources … what if maybe the disease made less “resources” available to these chimpanzees?

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

#190

Post by fguerraz » Sat, Apr 11, 2026, 7:35 AM UTC

I find it interesting that the BBC published this at a time they are already under heavy criticism for their coverage of the war in the Middle East (where they didn’t blink at Trump’s genocidal threats and published an article claiming that Iranians wanted to be nuked).

Now we’re saying that war is just natural. It must be a coincidence.