frontpage.
newsnewestaskshowjobs

Made with ♥ by @iamnishanth

Open Source @Github

Open in hackernews

Gorilla study reveals complex pros and cons of friendship

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2025/05/250505170816.htm
51•lentoutcry•3d ago

Comments

apt-apt-apt-apt•8h ago
"For example, our study found that strong and stable social bonds are generally linked to less illness in female gorillas -- but more illness in males. ... the stress of this may reduce their immune function.""

Ah, this must explain why I have rarely been sick these days.

N2yhWNXQN3k9•8h ago
> Ah, this must explain why I have rarely been sick these days.

Because you are a gorilla?

TechDebtDevin•8h ago
This doesn't answer the question we're all wondering..
bee_rider•8h ago
This time the gorillas have friends. 100 gorillas could definitely kill an unarmed dude.

Actually one Dunbar number of gorillas vs one Dunbar number of humans could be a good spin on this meme.

thrownblown•7h ago
100 gorillas could definitely kill the most well armed dude
thaumasiotes•6h ago
Armaments have a pretty high top end. If I'm armed with a missile-launching submarine, I'm confident that 100 gorillas will never be able to touch me.
BobaFloutist•5h ago
I think they were probably limiting armaments to things you could carry in your arms.

Which would make it a lot harder.

bee_rider•5h ago
I could carry a bicycle, a backpack of bullets, and some kind of rifle… I think it really depends on the specifics of the scenario (how far apart do we start and is it flat ground?)
chasil•8h ago
Life really answers that question for you.

If you are successful and established, friendship often means obligation. Money, skill, resources and effort are requested, sometimes politely, sometimes not.

If you are not successful and established, finding someone to engage in this relationship can provide significant advantage.

Some might say "a real friend would not ask such things, what you speak of are fairweather friends."

I would reply, "have you ever found your perfect equal in a friendship?"

I haven't.

https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/fair-weather_friend

thrownblown•7h ago
A real friend will help me fight a gorilla whether there are 100 of us or not
bluefirebrand•5h ago
When you say "I could fight that Gorilla on my own no problem", a real friend would say "yeah you definitely could, but I got your back"
N2yhWNXQN3k9•7h ago
> have you ever found your perfect equal in a friendship

In my experience, if you somehow keep some of your close friends that you had early in life, some of them end up eerily similar to you late in life.

chasil•7h ago
I am working towards being an expatriate in my retirement, so that really isn't an option.
anal_reactor•7h ago
One of my biggest problems is that I'm very good at managing my life on my own, yet my primitive brain keeps screaming "you're alone! this means you might die any moment and nobody will help you!".

> I would reply, "have you ever found your perfect equal in a friendship?"

I guess the point of friendships is to find people with whom the exchange is fair. As in, I have something they want, they have something I want, we exchange this.

N2yhWNXQN3k9•6h ago
> I have something they want, they have something I want, we exchange this.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/friendship/

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37750030

galaxyLogic•5h ago
Yes but what we exchange is "friendship" and "love". We want to feel loved. I assume that has a biological basis.

The transactional relationship is a different thing, it is a business relationship. You don't have to be a friend with someone you exchange things with.

jajko•3h ago
And with good friend the necessary part to exchange are good times shared together.
mettamage•4h ago
For me it’s more about vibes. If I find what you say fun, then let’s be friends.
The28thDuck•6h ago
I don’t think it’s about being equal. To think about it selfishly, then we would have nothing to gain from it. Friendship, like many relationships, is about the unique equilibrium struck that makes you both feel and be better, more than if you had just been an individual. It’s about strengthening each others weaknesses. Rising tide lifts all boats
chasil•6h ago
No, it is not about that.

All of our behaviors were ruthlessly selected by evolution in the 60k years since we emerged as a species.

The behaviors were never about the individual. We kept them because they reproduced.

thomquaid•6h ago
I think it is about that. Many of the social behaviors didnt evolve individually, and the social behaviors that end up selected for produced tribes. The group can be more fit than the sum of its parts, and both sides benefit from friendship because two people are about three times as strong working together vs the twice as strong you would expect.
mock-possum•4h ago
Honestly man I’m sorry to hear that - and I hope you haven’t given up looking.
wonderwonder•6h ago
100 men win. But some of them aren't going to make it
klank•8h ago
The stories of Maggie, Titus, and Cantsbee were poignant and I found worth reading to reflect on our own humanity. I recommend reading for that reason alone.
standardUser•8h ago
> Cantsbee, also a silverback, led his group for 22 years -- the longest dominance tenure ever recorded -- and fathered at least 28 offspring. He was known for his authoritative but peaceful nature, rarely initiating or entering fights, but was quick to protect others and resolve conflicts in the group. He had a particularly close relationship with his son Gicurasi, whose mother left when he was young, and who eventually took over leadership of the group in Cantsbee's final years. When Cantsbee later became ill, he chose to leave the group, spending his final months alone, except for one brief visit to the group shortly before his death.

This last paragraph is almost hidden by the ads, but worth reading.

bee_rider•8h ago
Goddamn, if we’re the ones with the enormous brains, how come that gorilla figured out life so much better?
_jab•7h ago
Is fathering 28 offspring your idea of a better life?
tough•6h ago
at least that gorilla seemed more caring of his 28 offspring and his community than say some billionaire's obsessed with having children...
bee_rider•6h ago
I dunno. I’m not sure how to calibrate that to human standards—I’m sure gorilla parenting is not quite as involved as human parenting.
dyauspitr•5h ago
Yes, I would have as many children as I could afford to comfortably raise.
sandworm101•4h ago
Assuming a stable population, if some males are fathering dozens of offspring, the bulk of males are probably fathering zero. Are those males still part of society or are then shunned/killed? What does the life of a not-dominant male look like? One who isn't the king's favorite?
colechristensen•4h ago
Most people's obituaries sound like that.

It reads in exactly the same tone as you'd get for an obit of a small town mayor, CEO, or really any leader.

jajko•3h ago
Yes but those would be often omitting some proper personal shit from their lives. We don't (need to) do such things for gorilla pack leader.

If you properly look around and sometimes go deeper than pleasant very few people are uncritically good people from various angles.

selbyk•3h ago
Nor are animals.
colechristensen•3h ago
>We don't (need to) do such things for gorilla pack leader.

Need to? Maybe not. But I can imagine the folks who studied these animals feeling a similar sort of attachment and desire to portray positivity in writing a gorilla obituary.

Alex_001•6h ago
Gorilla is very interesting. Reminded me of the late Coco...
55555•5h ago
“Can’t we move past that and be friends again?”

“Dude you ate my newborn baby.”

LegoGPT: Generating Physically Stable and Buildable Lego

https://avalovelace1.github.io/LegoGPT/
227•nkko•5h ago•70 comments

Void: Open-source Cursor alternative

https://github.com/voideditor/void
756•sharjeelsayed•17h ago•290 comments

6502 Illegal Opcodes in the Siemens PC 100 Assembly Manual (1980)

https://www.pagetable.com/?p=1798
25•matt_d•3h ago•16 comments

Dead Reckoning

https://www.damninteresting.com/dead-reckoning/
67•repost_bot•6h ago•14 comments

Reservoir Sampling

https://samwho.dev/reservoir-sampling/
404•chrisdemarco•17h ago•75 comments

Starlink User Terminal Teardown

https://www.darknavy.org/blog/a_first_glimpse_of_the_starlink_user_ternimal/
162•walterbell•7h ago•51 comments

Audiobookshelf: Self-hosted audiobook and podcast server

https://www.audiobookshelf.org/
75•fjk•7h ago•31 comments

Usenix ATC Announcement

https://www.usenix.org/blog/usenix-atc-announcement
59•eatbitseveryday•6h ago•3 comments

Doge software engineer's computer infected by info-stealing malware

https://arstechnica.com/security/2025/05/doge-software-engineers-computer-infected-by-info-stealing-malware/
122•lysp•2h ago•35 comments

A flat pricing subscription for Claude Code

https://support.anthropic.com/en/articles/11145838-using-claude-code-with-your-max-plan
167•namukang•13h ago•159 comments

Fui: C library for interacting with the framebuffer in a TTY context

https://github.com/martinfama/fui
124•Bhulapi•12h ago•41 comments

A Formal Analysis of Apple's iMessage PQ3 Protocol [pdf]

https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/usenixsecurity25/sec25cycle1-prepub-595-linker.pdf
109•luu•7h ago•69 comments

Zombieverter: Open source VCU for reusing salvage EV components

https://openinverter.org/wiki/ZombieVerter_VCU
11•trainsarebetter•3d ago•0 comments

eBPF Mystery: When is IPv4 not IPv4? When it's pretending to be IPv6

https://blog.gripdev.xyz/2025/05/06/ebpf-mystery-when-is-ipv4-not-ipv4-when-its-ipv6/
57•tanelpoder•6h ago•14 comments

Losing my Meta account because of release delays

https://madelinemiller.dev/blog/dark-side-account-bans/
36•ponco•3h ago•9 comments

Progress toward fusion energy gain as measured against the Lawson criteria

https://www.fusionenergybase.com/articles/continuing-progress-toward-fusion-energy-breakeven-and-gain-as-measured-against-the-lawson-criteria
206•sam•18h ago•93 comments

How "Night of the Living Dead" Accidentally Became Public Domain

https://screenrant.com/night-living-dead-movie-public-domain-copyright-accident/
7•edavis•2d ago•1 comments

Robotics meets the culinary arts

https://actu.epfl.ch/news/robotics-meets-the-culinary-arts/
14•gnabgib•4d ago•1 comments

Malaya's Timeless Design

https://www.linyangchen.com/Philately
4•cenazoic•2d ago•0 comments

From: Steve Jobs. "Great idea, thank you."

https://blog.hayman.net/2025/05/06/from-steve-jobs-great-idea.html
949•mattl•15h ago•246 comments

Finding a Bug in Chromium

https://bou.ke/blog/chromium-bug/
53•bouk•3d ago•8 comments

When Abandoned Mines Collapse

https://practical.engineering/blog/2025/5/6/when-abandoned-mines-collapse
189•impish9208•2d ago•51 comments

Rich Schroepell responds to Ron Rivest and the RSA MIT algorithm (1977)

https://archive.org/details/schroepell-all-pdf
5•iloveburritos89•2d ago•0 comments

Podfox: First Container-Aware Browser

https://val.packett.cool/blog/podfox/
81•pierremenard•11h ago•13 comments

WASM 2.0

https://www.w3.org/TR/wasm-core-2/
16•lioeters•2h ago•2 comments

Throwaway Code: Don't recycle, throw it away (2017)

https://www.sung.codes/blog/2017/throwaway-code-dont-recycle-throw-away
19•sails•2d ago•7 comments

Full Control.xyz Freeform Gcode

https://fullcontrol.xyz/#/models
7•downboots•3d ago•1 comments

Phoenician culture spread mainly through cultural exchange

https://www.mpg.de/24574685/0422-evan-phoenician-culture-spread-mainly-through-cultural-exchange-150495-x
70•gmays•3d ago•23 comments

Verification, the Key to AI (2001)

http://incompleteideas.net/IncIdeas/KeytoAI.html
22•anjneymidha•5h ago•2 comments

Stability by Design

https://potetm.com/devtalk/stability-by-design.html
110•potetm•14h ago•40 comments