‘I didn’t want to write about this’: the man who first saw chimps waging civil war

6 days ago by Orwi to c/science

John Mitani spent years studying a huge community of chimpanzees in Uganda. But then things took a dark turn – and his findings stunned the scientific world

Nath 9 points 5 days ago

I read the actual paper, and while I am not a member of the relevant scientific world, I was not at all stunned. In fact, the whole story felt like sequel to Jane Goodall's Chimp war of the 60's and 70's. Sure enough:

While these results are consistent with the hypothesis that kin selection affects male chimpanzee behavior (see also Morin, Moore, Chakraborty, Jin, Goodall, & Woodruff, 1994), our study also indicated that unrelated individuals cooperate frequently (Langergraber, et al., 2007).

Ok, then.

Like - sure, this is useful scientific study and does increase our knowledge of Chimps in Africa. But, I'm hardly stunned by it as well. As he himself acknowledges, it's consistent with previous studies. Is there a biologist reading this who can explain why the scientific world would be stunned by any of this? Or is this 2026 article about a paper published in 2020, expanding on papers dating back to the 1960's all a load of click-bait?

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psud 7 points 5 days ago

Also not a biologist but I note there is a narrative that all the great apes are peaceful and that so there is something wrong with warlike humans. I don't believe it's a narrative from science, but it might be what makes this newsworthy

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xylogx 6 points 5 days ago

Just to add to this, I feel like we believed war was an emergent property of civilization and with sufficient progress it could be eliminated. Evidence that war occurs in nature implies a deeper underlying impulse that cannot easily be avoided.

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AliasAKA 2 points 5 days ago

In a certain way, this is encouraging. If we can uncover the underlying mechanisms driving aggressive and war like behavior in chimpanzees, we may be able to treat these behaviors in humans.

Additionally, if it’s not an emergent phenomena of civilization, it may be only sometimes emergent in evolution. If life has evolved elsewhere, it may be possible they did not evolve war or war like aggressive behavior, and thus may not have the evils we have.

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newtraditionalists 5 points 5 days ago

This was a great read, thanks for sharing!

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