The Gombe Chimpanzee War | Hacker News Reader

The Gombe Chimpanzee War

en.wikipedia.org

134 pointsgwern30 comments

This is important also for our initially skeptical reaction to it. The fact that humans assumed that apes would never war shows the prevalence of the "noble savage" myth even among scientists.

The noble savage myth in turn is a modern (post-Renaissance) secularized version of "the fall" described in Genesis and other ancient religious myths. The idea is that God -- being good -- would never have intended nature to be full of violence and deception. In theology this is known as the problem of evil. Most Western religions solved the problem of evil by blaming ourselves -- we did it, and we inherited this sin, etc. Modern secular nature-worshippers (what I call "religious greens") have simply substituted nature for God and civilization or some other development for the fall-- it's a direct remapping of Judeo-Christian mythology.

"Uncorrupted" nature and pre-fall humans (if any exist, e.g. isolated tribes) must not have these characteristics according to the myth. If they are observed they must be a result of our "fallen" interference.

In reality nature is full of deception and warfare at all levels, and not just in predator-prey or parasite-host interactions but among members of the same species. This supports either an atheistic/naturalistic universe or a God whose nature is rather more complex than "God is good." If you want to keep theism, a polytheistic cosmology is also possible. Cultures who have a dualistic view of God or a polytheistic cosmos don't have monotheism's same sort of problem of evil.

This is also why I think suspension of value judgement is very important when studying nature, even human nature. Sometimes I gain the deepest insights into human behavior and culture when I try to look at things without making any value judgement.

> The idea is that God -- being good -- would never have intended nature to be full of violence and deception

That is interesting, I was not aware of it. It is kind of the opposite in Hindu philosophy. There is this idea of 'matsya nyana' which roughly translates to 'survival of the fittest' or 'law of the jungle' (it literally means bigger fish eats smaller fish) and the stories say that being civilized means that men must conquer this inherent desire for conquest and violence. When things go bad men behave like animals and destroy one another.

same concept as applied to other human cultures: Aztecs, Incas, Native Americans, Africans - they're all considered 'at one with nature', superior to European culture, when in fact they were just as bad (and in some cases) worse than the culture that displaced or enslaved them.

We've gone from one end of the spectrum to another w/ regard to our perceptions of 'other'.

Good point. "Other" used to be intrinsically evil and in need of our enlightenment. Now it's intrinsically superior. Neither is true.

I'm don't remember the exact anthropological evidence and data points for the claim but Gwynne Dyer, an awesome historian of modern, premodern and prehistoric war concluded that humans and chimps are statistically similar in their war culture. That is, roughly the same proportion of adult humans and chimps die in violent conflict with neighbors in a "natural" state.

This holds in hunter gatherer cultures, nomadic pasturalist cultures, and some middle ages cultures.

Many of the patterns are similar. Between core territories are large borderlands (often larger than the territories) where most conflicts occur. Most conflicts are opportunistic fights where one side has clearly superior numbers. If one side is established as overly weak, dawn raids occur on core territories.

The community that won included a famous male chimp called Frodo, who went on to become extremely aggressive - he killed a human baby, attacked Jane Goodall and also cartoonist Gary Larson ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kasakela_Chimpanzee_Community#...

"Frodo died in 2013 from an infected bite wound to his groin."

Ouch

If you're interested in learning a little more about Jane Goodall (and having a lot of laughs in the process), TankRiot recently did an episode [1] about her early work as well as her current activism.

[1] http://www.tankriot.com/2014/149/

Don't just laugh, you can actually do something! She is 80 years old and still very active, traveling and speaking through the world 350 days per year. If you want to support Jane Goodall's Institute, you can donate here:

https://my.janegoodall.org/donate?reset=1&id=21

"Your gift will help the Jane Goodall Institute:

Fight the illegal bushmeat trade and wildlife poaching, a threat so severe it could lead to the loss of several critical species including chimpanzees, gorillas and elephants;

Provide a safe haven for orphaned and injured chimpanzees at Tchimpounga Chimpanzee Rehabilitation Center in the Republic of the Congo;

Restore African habitat through balanced, sustainable, community programs which involve local citizens in replanting forests and developing sustainable livelihoods;

Educate and empower young people through Jane Goodall's Roots & Shoots program. "

I should clarify ... I wasn't laughing at Jane Goodall but rather at the delivery (and side-bar content) of the TankRiot crew.

Yes, and everybody can actually do more than just laugh. That's what I wanted to bring to everybody's attention.

Skip to 35 minutes.

Edit: Skip to 84 minutes.

http://michna.com/chimpanzees.htm

Extract about the war from Godall's book.

The big question that I'm left with after reading this article is: are there particular factors that played a role in causing this war, or does this kind of thing just 'randomly' happen.

Does anyone know if this has been researched to any degree, perhaps with other groups of chimpanzees or entirely different species? I imagine that observing these dynamics in a more 'primitive' creature could be enlightening to us...

There has been considerable subsequent research. The war like behaviour appears common in Chimps but happens much less in Bonobos which are genetically very similar to Chimps. There's a NYT article here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/18/science/lethal-violence-in...

Awesome! Thanks for the input.

If I remember correctly (been a while since I studied this stuff), the line leading to homo sapiens diverged before the Chimpanzee/Bonobo divergence. I've read a few things to the effect that humans show both chimp-like and bonobo-like solutions to conflict depending on the context.

There was an interesting book about some of it, Demonic Males (http://www.amazon.com/Demonic-Males-Origins-Human-Violence/d...). It might be a bit dated now (1997).

I think it just comes doen to natural selection. In an environemnt with limited resources necessary for survival, particularly food which approximately equates to territory, competition for those resources is competition for survival. This will select positively for the capacity to be aggressive. (Though there are of course other factiors that select for the capacity to be caring and generous.)

The issue then is that once nature has selected individuals capable of aggression, there' no guarantee that agression will allways and only ever manifest in situations directly related to personal survival.

So why does this apply to chimps but not bonobos? Are bonobos in areas with less limited resources or naturally different territorial divisions? The argument seems a bit lacking without understanding the distinction (and I know very little about these areas).

From Wikiepdia:

>It has been hypothesized that bonobos are able to live a more peaceful lifestyle in part because of an abundance of nutritious vegetation in their natural habitat, allowing them to travel and forage in large parties.

So I suppose take away the need for competion for resources and the selective pressure for aggression reduces or dissapears.

I seem to remember the trauma inherent in the environment being identified as a causal factor. I can't remember the details now, but I think some of the individual chimps involved has suffered some childhood trauma due to the recent civil war.

Can anyone else remember reading anything similar? If I'm not mis-remembering, this is another similarity between humans and chimps.

Chimps seem to exhibit very human characteristics. ;-)

That statement only makes sense if you have the (incorrect) assumption that these characteristics are "human". They are animal, more specifically predator/mammal characteristics. Humans are not distinct, special or separate. Homo Sapien Sapien are nothing more than one end of a gradient of "intelligence", "sentience", etc.

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