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

bbc.com

251–260 of 308 posts

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

#251

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…

Worth adding some nuance to the Wrangham framing here — he's not wrong exactly, but de Waal spent decades documenting the flip side: chimps reconcile, console each other, maintain coalitions in ways that don't fit the "demonic males" narrative cleanly. Both are true, and which one you see probably depends a lot on which population you're studying and under what conditions. Ngogo (which I think this is) is in a fragme…

Good points, but it any case, it's true that chimps in general treat group members very differently to outsiders isn't it? Those behaviours that de Waal mentions seem probably directed towards group members. Are there any documented chimp populations where chimps aren't violently aggressive towards members of other groups?

I remember reading, not sure if it's from de Waal, about chimp "raiding parties", where groups of young males will get excited and loudly vocalise as they gather together and head towards a neighboring territory, but when they get close they all go very silent, and will attack individuals from a neighboring troop if they sufficiently outnumber them. They tend to target the face and genitals when attacking other chimps, a different behaviour to when they're hunting monkeys, for example. I think Wrangham mentions that some chimps will hold the targeted individuals' limbs while others attack.

Aside from the brutality, these behaviours seem too cogently goal-directed and sophisticated to just be responses to environmental pressures. There's some deeper reasons involved, imo, even if the severity of the violence is exacerbated by resource and territorial pressures.

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

#252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can claim that and it's a comfortable thing to believe but that does not make it true. If you want to convince somebody who actually seeks truth, you have to make an argument how any country who has started a war recently has had a net economic profit.

Weord position to defend. So: modern wars are not about resources because there's enough food to feed everybody, those wars that are widely understood to be about resources (oil, land) are "distribution problems" and not about resources, and the only way to prove that they are is to show a country-wide economic benefit to the victor directly related to the war... Confidently dismissing others based on your own weird…

> those wars that are widely understood to be about resources (oil, land)

The Ukraine war was started because Putin wanted it to be his heritage that Ukraine is part of Russia. The Donbas has some mines but nothing that cannot be found eleswhere in the vast expanse of the Russian empire and nothing that Russia couldn't easily have bought with its oil money.

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

#253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worth adding some nuance to the Wrangham framing here — he's not wrong exactly, but de Waal spent decades documenting the flip side: chimps reconcile, console each other, maintain coalitions in ways that don't fit the "demonic males" narrative cleanly. Both are true, and which one you see probably depends a lot on which population you're studying and under what conditions. Ngogo (which I think this is) is in a fragme…

Good points, but it any case, it's true that chimps in general treat group members very differently to outsiders isn't it? Those behaviours that de Waal mentions seem probably directed towards group members. Are there any documented chimp populations where chimps aren't violently aggressive towards members of other groups? I remember reading, not sure if it's from de Waal, about chimp "raiding parties", where groups…

How are resource and territorial pressures not environmental pressures?

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

#254

So which side is fighting for our values?

This got me thinking. Do chimpanzees try and mate with pre pubescent young or is that somehow nature gated?

Apparently Bonobos regularly have sexual relations with infants.

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

#255

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…

For whatever reason, bonobos living under similar environmental constraints don’t do this. This suggests to me that the behavior is strongly controlled by genetics. Makes one wonder about the warmongers in our own species if they harbor some warmonger gene.

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

#257
post #169

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…

> We are strongly, strongly evolutionary oriented away from 'murder' - it's the original sin Very strong statement given the massive killing of kettle and poultry per second. Also given all the wars including those currently raging - I think is rather untrue. Besides the killing a lion does is not over resources, it’s the resource itself.

Since you're using Biblical language, I just want to point out that you're not Biblically accurate. Murder isn't the original sin.

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

#258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No religion other than Christianity and Islam fought for a man made religion. They haven't slowed down after wiping out thousands of cultures and tribes

That's a pretty strong statement. You know the saying: strong statements require equally strong evidence.

What happened to African cultures? Who destroyed it?

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

#259
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty disagreements everywhere. Under (usually fake) ideas of not enough resources for everyone, so the strongest must survive. Nazi planned to exterminate several whole ethnicities. If you think it was (or is) unversally accepted as "Bad" -- think again. Most developed countries had Nazi parties, including US and Canada. Some sympathize today. Several Middle East governments publicly claim that murders/rapes/kidnap…

I was thinking about your last point about why we honor veterans. In the US it’s not really the case that without them we’d be captured or killed. All our conflicts in the last several generations have been us invading or fighting in foreign lands against forces that were not attacking us. All our modern military personnel are willfully employed and well compensated and given lifetime benefits for that.

Well, it's much better to be on the invading side though. I've been to a coutry that was on invaded side (Ukraine), and, trust me, you'd always want to be on the invading side. And sometimes all it takes is just one invasion.

But when I said "we honor our veterans" I did not speak of USA, I spoke of any country veterans.

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

#260

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…

> It's not something we even argue over. Murder = Bad. No disagreement across cultures.

This is not true at all. Not even close. Sneaky backstabbing murder by a group member against another group member in violation of implicit group norms has probably always been "bad", but "go out and murder some random human" was a rite of passage for many cultures, raids against other groups for no reason at all except for fun and maybe women were typical across perhaps the majority of groups for thousands of years, and history is full to the brim of wars prosecuted for no particular reason at all.

This goes well into the historical period and there are doubtless groups today still with the same attitude. Why did the Athenians murder the entire male population of Melos despite their neutrality? Because the strong do what we can while the weak suffer what they must.

You are confusing your modern-day HN-poster social norms with some constant of human nature.

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