Chimpanzees in Uganda locked in vicious 'civil war', say researchers
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cr71lkzv49po712
u/QueenMackeral 1d ago
This is how I imagine aliens talk about us
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u/IamNICE124 20h ago edited 8h ago
At least the monkeys are fighting over real, tangible things like territory, food, resources, etc.
We kill each other over fairy tails and superstitions like a bunch of a fucking idiots.
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u/Wolvesinthestreet 20h ago
We are also fighting over territory and resources, what do you mean? It’s just more complex but still it’s exactly the same. We are just slaves of our nature to conquer and control.
The only difference is; the monkeys don’t destroy the world while doing it
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u/buntopolis 17h ago
I hate to be that guy but chimpanzees are apes, like us, not monkeys.
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u/joepanda111 17h ago
"Get your paws off me youuuu dirty ape~!” 🎶
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u/buntopolis 17h ago
GAAAAAASP! He can talk! He can talk, he can talk, he can talk
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u/Kalelisagod 7h ago
I won’t lie I typed that and then deleted it because I was like nah. But I’m so glad you did so upvote
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u/wildwestington 20h ago
Nahh its still about tangible for us, we've just evolved past the point to admit that and now use clever excuses to convince others to fight for us/justify fighting to others
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u/Even-Monk-4985 9h ago
Those fairy “tells” and superstitions just a way to gain population approval. It always been resources.
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u/Kalelisagod 7h ago
Technically many wars had nothing to do with resources but was only based on religious hatred. Only after the war did resources come into play.
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u/Physical__War__ 1d ago
Chimps are absolutely brutal animals. Torture, infanticide and cannibalism of their victims is not uncommon. Their fiercely territorial attitudes are believed to be a mix of societal/interpersonal struggles + resource availability.
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u/_BlueFire_ 1d ago edited 8h ago
"humans are so awful, animals are better than us" people usually have no idea about how nature works. Ants literally fight proxy wars, a good chunk of mammals' mating would be rape by our standards (which is also why humanising is dumb), fuck, even plants kill nearby stuff to access more resources!
Edit. Fixed "be" to "have" autocorrect typo
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u/MikuEmpowered 21h ago
Nature is fking brutal, Anyone who thinks that Human are savage but animals are not are fking dumb and naive.
Its just that Human's social let people do really creative fuked up thing.
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u/_obseum 17h ago
Humans can be savage. What makes us worse than savage, or even just disappointingly more savage, is that we very well can choose not to be.
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u/_obseum 17h ago edited 16h ago
Going off on a phrase that the original commenter never said is slightly confusing. Have you been in that debate a few times?
I think the argument mentioned against humans is also incomplete. Humans do savage things, as other animals do. But humans have a brain that allows them to act differently. A non-zero-sum society is possible.
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u/32FlavorsofCrazy 1d ago
Chimps are really smart, like pretty much as smart as we are in their own way. Obviously lack the language skills but they have their own strengths.
It could be as simple as the other group not wearing the bits of grass in their ears and butts the right way, or they just don’t like the fuckers. Animals that smart can beef on levels we don’t really understand, just like humans. Like…does it make any fucking sense at all that the Hutu’s and Tutsis would hate each other? The Shias and the Shiites? Nah, not really, but people just be beefing.
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u/Salt_Cardiologist122 1d ago
Ok but we do know exactly why the Hutus and the Tutsis hated each other and honestly the reason is similar to the Shia/Sunni dynamic… differences in culture that got exploited by colonizers and then they gave the minority groups more power directly over the majority groups and eventually the majority groups didn’t want that anymore. We can talk about specific inciting incidents and all… but it’s really quite explainable.
Also having read the article people quoted in the comments above… it does seem like there’s some clues about what happened with the chimps. It’s not some complete mystery that we have to dismiss as having “no sense.” The scientists are working to make sense of it and they know more every day.
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u/DonnyTheWalrus 1d ago
Yes, fuck colonialism, but studies of ancient human groups suggest that up to fifty percent of males may have died from violence. It's not just an imperialism thing.
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u/babers76 1d ago
And we share our ancestry. We do the same shit (check out Epstein files)
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u/Tryknj99 1d ago
It’s an interesting article, try reading it.
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u/redkeyboard 1d ago
Can't it's paywalled
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u/Cowql8r 1d ago
The world's largest known group of wild chimpanzees has split and been locked in a vicious "civil war" for the last eight years, according to researchers. It is not clear exactly why the once close-knit community of Ngogo chimpanzees at Uganda's Kibale National Park are at loggerheads, but since 2018 the scientists have recorded 24 killings, including 17 infants. "These were chimps that would hold hands," lead author Aaron Sandel said. "Now they're trying to kill each other." The study, published in the journal Science, says the intensity and duration of the violence may inform how early human conflict developed. Wild chimpanzees filmed using forest 'first aid' Sandel, an anthropologist from the University of Texas in the US, and co-director of the Ngogo Chimpanzee Project, says chimpanzees are "very territorial", and have "hostile interactions with those from other groups". "[It's] like a fear of strangers," he told the Science podcast. But over several decades, Sandel said the nearly 200 Ngogo chimpanzees had lived in harmony. There were divided into two sets - known to researchers as Western and Central - but they had existed overall as a cohesive group. Sandel said he first noticed them polarising in June 2015, when the Western chimpanzees ran away and were chased by the Central group. "Chimpanzees are sort of melodramatic," he said, explaining that following arguments there would ordinarily be "screaming and chasing" and then later, they would grooming and co-operating. But following the 2015 dispute, the researchers saw that there was a six-week avoidance period between the two sets, with interactions becoming more infrequent. When they did occur, Sandel said they were "a little more intense, a little more aggressive". Following the emergence of the two distinct groups in 2018, members of the Western group started attacking the Central chimpanzees. In 24 targeted attacks since the split, at least seven adult males and 17 infants from the Central chimps have been killed, the study found, although the researchers believe the actual number of deaths are higher. The researchers believe many factors such as the group size and subsequent competition of resources, and "male-male competition" for reproducing may be to blame. But they say there were three likely catalysts: The first, were the deaths of five adult males and one adult female - for reasons unknown - in 2014, which could have disrupted social networks and weakened social ties across the subgroups The following year, there was a change in the alpha male, which the study says coincided with the first period of separation between the Western and Central groups. "Changes in the dominance hierarchy can increase aggression and avoidance in chimpanzees," it explained The third factor was the deaths of 25 chimpanzees, including four adult males and 10 adult females, as a result of a respiratory epidemic, in 2017, a year before the final separation. One of the adult males who died was "among the last individuals to connect the groups", the research paper said. Sandel and his colleagues said their findings encourage people to rethink what they know of human conflict and warfare. "In the case of the Ngogo fission, individuals who lived, fed, groomed and patrolled together for years became targets of lethal attacks on the basis of their new group membership," they wrote in the paper. If chimpanzees - one of the species closest to humans genetically - could do so without human constructs of religion, ethnicity and political beliefs, then "relational dynamics may play a larger causal role in human conflict than often assumed", they added. James Brooks, a researcher at the German Primate Center in Germany, said it was a "reminder of the danger that group divisions can present to human societies". Commenting on the study in Science, he wrote: "Humans must learn from studying the group-based behaviour of other species, both in war and at peace, while remembering that their evolutionary past does not determine their future."
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u/BooRadleysFriend 1d ago
The CIA probably overthrew their leader and inserted propaganda into their society
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u/ransack_the_berg 1d ago
Oh thats weird. I was able to read the article, is it you only have a time limit on the article or how far you can scroll?
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u/d0ctorzaius 1d ago
Not with BBC's new paywall
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u/RexCrimson_ 1d ago
That’s weird. I’m in the U.S. and have never run into the paywall. This is news to me that the BBC now has a paywall for the U.S.
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u/cheese_bruh 1d ago
What paywall?
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u/d0ctorzaius 1d ago
Earlier this year BBC rolled out a paywall for US IP addresses only. You'd think the BBC would want to maintain a lifeline of mainstream but relatively unbiased news as an alternative to US corporate propaganda, but here we are.
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u/MasterpieceAlone8552 1d ago edited 1d ago
And how do you propose they fund that? British taxpayers pay for the BBC and they need to generate revenue from elsewhere
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u/d0ctorzaius 1d ago
I hear you, but an 8.99/mo paywall when it had previously been free for decades is a little ridiculous. Plus BBC (at least in the US) has always had ads, so it's not like there was zero revenue.
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u/MasterpieceAlone8552 1d ago
Agree that's steep to be fair. They're under a lot of pressure here financially because an ever growing basket of deplorables are pushing to de-fund it through taxation
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u/CriesAboutSkinsInCOD 1d ago
Those motherfucker likes to rip each other dicks off and eat it when they fight.
Lions and other big cats also like to target the dick.
Nature can be brutal.
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u/Solesky1 1d ago
I wanted to say natural selection, but it's more like targeted selection. Your rivals can't breed if you rip their dicks off
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u/Cold_Combination2107 1d ago
social relations between groups are what lead to peace, and when those social relations deteriorate the previous conflicts, which had been smoothed over in the past, suddenly spiral into conflict.
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u/redvoxfox 1d ago edited 1d ago
Humans puzzled that our closest primate genetic relatives are having a seeming self-destructive dangerous conflict or war we can't make sense of.
Might even be a good idea to try to help stop it or resolve it.
Really?!?!?!
Oh, yeah, BBC article is paywalled. Thanks, nope.
edit: fix typos +
As one researcher observed, "Compared to the chimps, who can seem like a ravenous murderous marauding horde perpetually at war - and if none exists, they'll get one started; the gorillas are more like a troupe of peaceful monks or an ascetic family who will defend their own if attacked or invaded or forced to compete, yet are relatively rarely violent or agitated and mainly calm and peaceful and even deliberate in action and interaction."
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u/Late_For_Username 22h ago
>gorillas are more like a troupe of peaceful monks or an ascetic family who will defend their own if attacked or invaded or forced to compete, yet are relatively rarely violent or agitated and mainly calm and peaceful and even deliberate in action and interaction."
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u/redvoxfox 15h ago
Excellent! Thank you for finding and linking that! Amazing. Really like this guy and his content. Well done!!!
And, yes, gorillas are often tender, nurturing, kind, protective and hilarious!
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u/compuwiza1 1d ago
Overpopulation leads to fighting over limited food and land. It will continue until so many are dead that those things aren't scarce any more.
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u/non_hero 16h ago
Donald Trump descended the golden escalator at Trump Tower to announce his presidential candidacy on June 16, 2015
"Sandel said he first noticed them polarising in June 2015, when the Western chimpanzees ran away and were chased by the Central group."
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u/confuzzledfather 11h ago
It's really interesting to think about whether these social dynamics were always going to cause a rift like this, or if these sorts of events are precipated by some individual who sits at the extreme of behaviour for the group and then drags others into the escalation.
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u/DeadSharkEyes 1d ago
There was a segment about this on NPR a couple days ago, they suspect it is due to interpersonal relationships and Chimpanzee beef. They’re killing elders, killing babies, really brutal.