neversaydieChimpanzees in Uganda locked in eight-year 'civil war', say researchers
Here is the paper: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adz4944 - it's interesting.
I noticed there was a respiratory epidemic that killed 25 chimps naturally quickly, one would imagine that would have quite a societal destabilizing impact?
My initial instinct is that they were just reestablishing social order among the group after such a dramatic event.
Edit : I just read the paper and the discussion does a good job at laying out the entire landscape that contributed to the disruption. Pretty fascinating but also totally explainable due to the circumstances explained, which in and of itself is wildly fascinating!
Sudden power vacuums are often filled by the most opportunistic individuals in human culture. People who are frequently more concerned with personal gain over the collective well-being of the group. It's why assassinating heads of state usually just makes the situation worse.
Plenty of people stepped into power vacuums not to make themselves rich but to save their nation Napolean, Tito, Cincinnatus, arguably George Washington.
I wonder if chimps are sophisticated enough to believe in omens? Perhaps they saw the sudden deaths are some sort of sign that the established structure was weak or immoral.
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 years and don't know what the current consensus on the topic is but it's interesting to consider if some environments naturally promote the unlucky inhabitants to harm each other.
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. Never mind dying in your prime reproductive age!
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 disagreement there either.
Or put another way - the 'self' can gain advantage with murder, but the group and species probably will pay for it long term.
I wonder if there are just things that species really have to learn over and over, particularly things like 'active deconfliction' etc..
It might also depend on mating dynamics. If females mostly prefer to all mate within the top few percent of males in a community, there might not be much to lose if some of the lower status males of them take their chances going on a war party to conquer/steal some females.
I think that’s too narrow. You can also advance your genes by helping your sisters or other close relatives have offspring.
Sure but you can advance your genes even more by taking a woman for yourself. And if there are already enough other males to ensure the survival of the females and children then it might be worth some of the males going to war to get some females.
At some point the marginal utility of warring is better for both the individual and the group than the marginal utility of yet another non-reproducing male hanging around "helping" out their kin while eating the resources.
> 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 disagreement there either.
There are plenty of people who advocate for war and consider it good, and plenty of disagreements over war.
People are usually in agreement that war / killing is bad when other people do it but will find all sorts of ways to justify themselves doing it when it is to their advantage. This isn't really contradictory, from an evolutionary perspective.
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i remember seeing the chimpanzee descend that elevator in 2015, back then everyone thought it was hilarious!
This doesn't surprise me. We've known for decades that chimpanzees groups make war on other chimpanzee groups. Eight years is a long time, though.