We both do it because chimps and humans shared a common ancestor only 8 million years ago.

That's a bit conceited.

Animals have inner lives as well. They have their own thoughts and feelings. And sometimes those feelings are anger and their thought is to kick the shit out of those assholes over there.

Fuck man, my cats occasionally scrap with each other. I know it's not anything they've learned from the people in my house because we don't go full Wrestlemania on each other.

For those of us who are unlikely to make time to watch a 4-part documentary, are there any particular lessons about social/political dynamics that you learned that stuck out to you or felt particularly prescient?

Loved this series. It was tragic. The cycle of violence, trauma, isolation, male performance.

This is reality TV with animals. Like any reality TV show, the events and reactions are manipulated. I wouldn't put any credibility on this.

There's also the 1,5h documentary Rise of the Warrior Apes which is sort of a "prequel" to Chimp Empire. It was filmed over a period of 20 years in the same location and documents how the researches originally came upon this unusual chimpanzee tribe. The production values are not nearly as polished as in Chimp Empire but in my opinion it was still an interesting watch if you find this kind of stuff fascinating. The researchers themselves talk a lot in this.

That’s one way to look at it. It’s fairly common to view nature this way. I wonder where it comes from.

I remember the time, in some film I watched, researchers intervened to save penguins trapped in a crater. A holy moment that was.

> To the extent that they have good memory, they live in a world of finite resources, and their behavior was shaped by the forces of game theory as applied to tribes, this is more or less inevitable. You can read that as defeatism or just math. We can't overcome the force of game theory, but we can make it work for us by making our transactions increasingly transparent and repeatable, so that cooperation is more successful than defection.

Note that the conclusions of the paper, while acknowledging the problem of access to resources, are different. They also do not conclude that this is "more or less inevitable":

> The lethal aggression that followed the fission at Ngogo informs models of intergroup conflict. All observed attacks were initiated by the numerically smaller Western group, contradicting simple imbalance-of-power models that predict an advantage for larger groups. Persistent offensive success by Western males suggests that cohesion supported by enduring relationships can outweigh numeric disadvantage. Our observations are also relevant for predictions from parochial altruism. Because cohesion among the Western cluster preceded overt hostility, external threats may be unnecessary to foster cooperation. Cohesion among members of the wider Ngogo group, however, may have weakened when external threats from adjacent groups decreased after territorial expansion in 2009.

and

> This study encourages a reevaluation of current models of human collective violence. If chimpanzee groups can polarize, split, and engage in lethal aggression without human-type cultural markers, then relational dynamics may play a larger causal role in human conflict than often assumed. Cultural traits remain essential for large-scale cooperation, but many conflicts may originate in the breakdown of interpersonal relationships rather than in entrenched ethnic or ideological divisions. It is tempting to attribute polarization and war that occur in humans today to ethnic, religious, or political divisions. Focusing entirely on these cultural factors, however, overlooks social processes that shape human behavior—processes also present in one of our closest animal relatives. In some cases, it may be in the small, daily acts of reconciliation and reunion between individuals that we find opportunities for peace.

Which sounds kinda hopeful!

My own observations is that the preconditions for the split that led to open warfare between the two Chimp groups was:

1. The nonviolent (illness) death of a few key individuals that linked both groups, and...

2. The complete stop of interbreeding. Once the two groups stopped interbreeding, the split was finalized and they became truly hostile.

Stretching this a bit, it makes me think of those (usually white supremacists, but not always) who claim "multiculturalism" is to blame for all the world's problems, and if only every ethnic or religious group stayed in their lane and didn't mix with the other, we could all live in peace. But it seems to me the lesson from this paper is that this would make the split complete enough that we would decisively start butchering each other.

I'd suggest reading some David Graeber. Viewing everything through the lens of game theory, as if it was some physical law, is very much off the mark.

Prime directive doesn't apply because they are part of our home planet. Our actions or in-actions can improve or worsen their living conditions. Their natural world is gone anyway. We've changed it already.

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!

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 Western Ngogo are clearly trying to spread the values of democracy and equality to the backwards Central Ngogo society that also happens to also have resources important to the Western Ngogo

Central Ngogo has complained that every time it's tried to democratically elect a leader, that leader had been overthrown by Western Ngogo—creating an environment that is hostile to anyone other than WN having a so-called "democracy". CN has also criticized WN as ultimately just being "oligarchy with extra steps" and creating an empire that requires the subjugation of CN.

I am siding with the group that opens bananas from the bottom.

negotiations on petrol rights still ongoing.

That depends on which side of "our values" you are talking about.

Are you orange team or green team?

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

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.

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