A recent article in the Washington Post (by Rachel Feltman)
starts out by stating “When rival communities of chimps interact, death is
often the result. That may not sound out of the ordinary in the human world,
but it’s quite unusual for other animals- other than chimps, we seem to be the
only ones who go to war”. I don’t know about that. I’ve seen some big-time ant
battles, for instance. But if she means tanks and drones and communication
lines, aircraft carriers and the like, well yeah. That’s just a function of
‘intelligence’ and capability, however. But that said, almost every other
animal species survives by tearing other animal species apart limb from limb
and devouring them live. And, in many instances, eating the young of their own species, as fish are wont to do.
Some females devour their partner after mating.
Predictably,
some researchers have argued that- you guessed it- the chimp wars we’ve
witnessed are actually caused by human
intervention. Yes, even though by these folks own understanding of science,
chimps preceded humans on the world
stage and evolutionary ladder (and therefore must have so very much to teach
us), apparently they were all existing in peaceful, non-judgemental
harmony, holding hands and waiting for the Oprah Winfrey Network to arrive
before we humans showed up.
Tragically
for them, a new study in the journal
Nature shows that chimps violent behavior is inherent, long-standing and a
fundamental intra-species trait.
Data
from the study showed that chimp-on-chimp killings weren’t more likely to occur
when human interference like feedings or
habitat destruction occurred.
Supporters
of the opposite view are unimpressed. “I am surprised that (the study) was
accepted for publication,” Robert Sussman, an anthropologist at Washington
University in St. Louis, told science magazine. “Even the groups that the
research team claimed were free from human disturbance were probably impacted
by our interference”, Sussman said. He didn’t explain how. Did these chimps
watch a lot of television? Talk about outright illogical denial! “ The farmer in the Dell, the farmer in the
Dell…I’m not listening, yada, yada, yada!”.
In an
accompanying article in Nature, behavioral ecologist Joan Silk, who was not
involved with the study, pointed out that our desire to disprove an evolutionary basis for warfare may be
wishful thinking. Our perception of primate behavior, she states, is often
skewed so that “morally desirable features, such as empathy and altruism, have
deep evolutionary roots, whereas undesirable features, such as group-level
violence and sexual coercion do not.”
Joan is
right. It is incredible that many ‘researchers’, ‘academicians’ or ‘scientists’
want to show that all our best traits are gifts of evolution and our worst
traits came later.
This is
exactly the opposite of the truth. Our survival instincts, flight or fight
response, etc., etc. are understandably parts of our evolutionary heritage.
Empathy, altruism, love, humor, kindness, self-discipline and control, these
and other “better angels of our nature”
equally obviously are born of another, more recent source. God,
religion, Christianity, the Ten Commandments, spirituality… or simply the
gradual result of less brutal lives and more free time to reflect and engage in
leisure activities.
“Humans
are not destined to be warlike because chimpanzees sometimes kill their
neighbors,” Silk writes.
Are we
aping chimps behavior or are they aping ours?
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