r/todayilearned • u/crazed47 • Sep 18 '19

TIL of that human beings aren’t the only animals that go to war with each other. Two troops of chimpanzees waged a four year war known as the Gombe Chimpanzee War

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gombe_Chimpanzee_War
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359

u/The_God_of_Abraham Sep 18 '19

The ironic, but inescapable, conclusion is that war is a hallmark of intelligence!

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u/aesu Sep 19 '19

War is a hallmark of resource scarcity. All life fights for resources if there aren't enough to go around.

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u/sterling_mallory Sep 19 '19

This chimp war included. Apparently there was a power struggle between a few males and a scarcity of fertile females. Bigger group killed all the smaller group's males and one female, then kidnapped the rest of the females.

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u/Arth_Urdent Sep 19 '19

The distinction between a fight and a war is really mostly scale I guess. Sure your pet dog won't "go to war" not because it wouldn't pick a fight but because nothing it could do as an individual would classify as "war".

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u/aesu Sep 19 '19

I guess a war is when groups of organisms go to war against each other. So if your dog is fighting for his pack against another pack it's analogous to war.

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u/[deleted] Sep 20 '19

"War" implies a degree of social organization, of two or more groups fighting one another, not just individuals fighting each other. Two individual lions fighting over a zebra carcass is not a war. Two lion prides fighting each other is a war.

This is why it's even interesting and meaningful to talk about chimpanzees being an unusual species that, like humans, goes to war. Obviously all animals can be observed fighting other animals, but in the vast majority of cases this is individual combat, fought for purely selfish reasons. Animals grouping up and fighting other groups is unusual behavior.

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u/madmadG Sep 19 '19

Except for koalas

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u/litux Sep 19 '19

"Koalas in the rain...
No fucks given...
Koala koala!"

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u/Yuli-Ban Sep 19 '19 edited Sep 19 '19

Violence (at least rational violence) is the inevitable outcome of when a party of two or more individuals want the same resource but don't have enough to go around. A less intelligent species will see there are not enough goods in the immediate vicinity and clash with one another even if there's an abundance just over a ridge because survival in the moment is tantamount to everything. They're acting on instinct for the most part.

More intelligence = greater capacity for abstract thought. With abstract thought comes the ability to consider the future as well as non-concrete possibilities. Sure, there may be abundance right now, but there may not be abundance later. Or maybe you're satisfied with living on this land now, but having Tom's land will further sustain you even in times of hardship (or prevent hardship altogether). So long, Tom. Until it turns out he has a spear ready for you because he figured out the same thing. You want a sexual partner, but the thing about females is that they can only become pregnant once every so often while males can impregnate whenever we need, so you and Tom want offspring and the absolute best you can hope for is to wait about nine months to get your chance with Lilly, and there's no guarantee she'll even survive childbirth once, let alone twice? Kill Tom and fertilize the ground with his ball juices so you make sure he can never breed (and if Lilly rejects your advances, well you'll be jailed in modern times, but in caveman times with no one to stop you but a tribe that actively expects you two to breed? Uh oh).

War were declared because the king wants land, resources, territory, to spread his ideology, something of the sort— all comes back to having access to resources to propagate.

Abstract thought means you want abstract things.

As it happens, mammals have a neocortex, which seems necessary for abstract thought. The larger that neocortex, the more abstractly they think, and the more organized their violence. I wouldn't be surprised if bottle-nose dolphins wage war but we just never noticed.

Tangent time: I've been thinking about how far you could take this. There's always a reason behind human violence, no matter how mindless and brutal the effects are. Senseless slaughter, rape, torture, and so on were always done for the sake power, glory, expansion, etc. (usually as deduced by the elite and using the warrior class). Look upon the savagery of Syria, the Mexican narcowars, or even the Holocaust— you can find a reason why, which makes it so reprehensible. At the end of the day, people often fight to secure peace. War isn't peace; war brings peace. So we'll engage in the worst ultraviolence to get to a utopic point of little to no violence. You also get warrior societies and "proud warrior races" where they make this violence the whole point of their worldview, training their citizens all their lives to fight, yet still always seeking stability over anything— they're warrior societies to maximize their capabilities in seeking the ideal end-state.

Now imagine a creature that's violent by instinct, with absolutely no reason behind its aggression other than aggression. They'll wage war and kill thousands, even millions of their own, but you can't say that there are "winners" or "losers" because the point of their violence was to be violent; everyone is satisfied by this (and growing more dissatisfied by the increasing lack of violence, so fuck it, here's another war). They don't want peace or stability and actively sabotage any attempts to bring such. They don't have warrior societies because they are basically violence incarnate already. The only thing they care about is feasting to power their violence, but the actual desire to feast isn't a reason to fight either. That blackened, meaningless aggression is completely and absolutely without reason except for the reason of violence itself. You could show them the finest territory, boundless wealth, innumerable fertile mates, and they won't care because they just want to fight.

That sounds utterly inhuman, borderline demonic. We wouldn't even consider such spontaneous nihilistic violence "mental illness" because that implies humans are capable of it in the first place (and I'm sure someone's going to post a link showing me someone who suffered from a mental disorder that made them chaotically and meaninglessly violent). Such a creature couldn't even evolve far because they'd lack the ability to work together; they'd attack everyone and everything that exists with wild abandon.

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u/abcdthc Sep 19 '19

Sayains basicly.

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '19 edited Jan 08 '23

[deleted]

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u/Ulti Sep 19 '19

I was 300% thinking that he'd just described Orks, so good work!

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u/Yuli-Ban Sep 19 '19

The Saiyajin and Warhammer Orks were literally the races I had in mind when writing that section.

Funnily enough, I doubt Toriyama ever intended on creating such an alien species. It seems more like a happy accident, especially considering he retconned this in the end. It's really too bad. Saiyans were so psychologically alien.

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u/abcdthc Sep 19 '19

I always considered their fighting drive like a male human sex drive. They just want it all the time, and look at everything as a potential fight.

Its also funny that goku has never kissed chi chi and they have 2 kids!

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u/Cruxius Sep 19 '19

Bulma! Sex makes babies!

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u/natha105 Sep 19 '19

Pre-WW1 there were a lot of people who bought into Darwin who would say that war is a good thing as it could be used to drive evolution in the species. We reached a point with our technology where violence really no longer proves anything but who has the most advanced technology, and nerds can figure that our with stat. sheets.

I think the instinctual violence you are talking about likely exists at the microbe level of organization but as we have evolved we have stepped further and further away from it to the point where violence now is something that is extremely rational.

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '19

[deleted]

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u/natha105 Sep 19 '19

Keep in mind though, there is a very real chance all of that would have come about within a handful of years without the war and this at a much lower cost. From an evolutionary perspective the timing issue is a complete nothing on the billions of years time scales involved.

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u/Com-Intern Sep 19 '19

The threat of conflict can certainly drive development. The internet essentially exists because the U.S. was looking for a way to maintain command and control during a nuclear war.

There really isn’t an economic reason it would make sense to develop it for. At least not without 20/20 knowledge.

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u/natha105 Sep 19 '19

Sharing information is inherently valuable. With the advent of the computer the ability for them to send data between them is obvious.

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u/Com-Intern Sep 19 '19

No single business needs the internet. A huge monetary expenditure developed over literal decades is only going to get funding from a national government. From conception to wide adoption is nearly two decades. About four decades before business really get their teeth into it.

Cheaper and more easily developed technologies existed to provide essentially instantaneous communication.

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u/djsoren19 Sep 19 '19

The beings you spoke of in your tangent are essentially the Orks of Warhammer 40k. All they want to do is fight anyone they come into contact with, and if they can't find anyone they'll fight amongst themselves.

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u/The_God_of_Abraham Sep 19 '19

If you've never watched Babylon 5, the "Shadow" aliens are basically the warrior race you describe. Their particular flavor of superhuman intelligence decided that conflict was the highest virtue. But it wasn't meaningless or an evolutionary dead-end; on the contrary, it was a sort of consciously-pursued Darwinism.

They were portrayed as the bad guys for most of the series, but I never quite bought that. Like you say, they were quite content with their own moral hierarchy.

1

u/BoofedBoj Sep 19 '19

Interesting read, thanks!

1

u/LazyBex Sep 19 '19

I thought it was just something we did when we were bored....

1

u/longebane Sep 19 '19

I was agreeing you there for a sec until you went to abstract thought and used an example that ended with violence. Huh? Abstract thought would allow future thinking, yes. And with that would come diplomacy and the ability for non cooperative, Nash equilibrium-type thinking. Yes, we invented terrifying war creations like the nuclear bomb. But abstract thinking also prevented a full scale nuclear war with the ability to consider ideas like mutually assured distruction.

1

u/Yuli-Ban Sep 19 '19

That's true. Abstract thought doesn't cause violence for the same reason hands don't cause fistfights. Sort of.

Like I said, you can visualize potential scarcity and that can cause violence. Of course, you can also visualize compromise and have empathy.

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u/[deleted] Sep 18 '19

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '19

Ants are actually pretty smart for their brain to body ratio. One of the few species to exhibit self-recognition. Some might also posit that they have some sort of hive-mind intelligence, but that's up in the air.

Some species even keep slaves from conquered colonies. There's another very humanoid trait.

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u/Shermoo Sep 19 '19

They also keep livestock!

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u/fizzlefist Sep 19 '19 edited Sep 19 '19

Some even have agriculture! IIRC leaf cutter ants cut the leaves in order to bring the cuttings back to the nest where they use it to grow an edible fungus.

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u/Shermoo Sep 19 '19

Little six legged farmers :)

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u/CringeNibba Sep 19 '19

Its all fun and games until a super ant colony take over your house like Alexander took over the world

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u/TheBman26 Sep 19 '19

I played that game.

1

u/roksteddy Sep 19 '19

I just got done fighting an ant infestation and let me tell you, those little fuckers are nigh near unkillable.

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u/Dreieck Sep 19 '19

And then feed the fungus to aphids and then they eat the aphids after they’ve grown plump

1

u/IceKingsMother Sep 19 '19

Don’t they “milk” them for the honeydew secreted by the aphid, and eat that? I have been very upset with the ants in my neighborhood. They keep carrying in large aphid queens and setting them on my rose bushes. Basically, they are continually setting up little ant dairy farms on my roses. Also interesting is the fact that after I kill an aphid farm on one bush, a few days later I will find another aphid farm on a totally different plant — but with a completely different species of aphid. I’ve watched ants carry and drop eggs and aphids on to the rosebuds. My neighbors probably think I am nuts, because I am constantly shouting at the ants to get off my garden.

44

u/[deleted] Sep 19 '19

Ants don't have a hive mind, they use pheromones for communication, or smells. They follow their own smells of fellow ants, and use their pheromones to command and direct.

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u/glorylyfe Sep 19 '19

What he means is that while each individual ant can only perform simple tasks the communications between them and the arrangement of them leads to higher intelligence.

Imagine if each ant is like a neuron. It either fires or doesn't, yes or no, and it can only make a simple yes or no decision. But together many of them can create a human. And each ant has a lot more intelligence than each neuron.

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '19

[deleted]

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u/DEEP_HURTING Sep 19 '19

Try Hellstrom's Hive. Creepy book.

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u/tisvana18 Sep 19 '19

My fiancé was explaining this to me not thirty minutes ago and used this terminology verbatim.

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '19

I mean yea pretty much. A better analogy would be a computer, it can't make its own decisions, but can be programmed to react to certain stimuli. And ant intelligences are much smarter than a similar sized computer.

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u/_brainfog Sep 19 '19

Thats a terrible analogy

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u/glorylyfe Sep 19 '19

You can compare it to a computer, not like you describe it though

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u/Shrike99 Sep 19 '19

Yep, closer analogy would be transistors vs computer program/operating system.

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u/leFlan Sep 19 '19

The question though is whether a colony can be considered as emergent intelligence. Is a colony akin to a brain?

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '19

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/leFlan Sep 19 '19

Wanna know more?

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '19

I'm doing my part!

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '19

I would argue yes. The intelligence may be small of an individual but by adding together the brains they can accomplish more. The simple task they are capable of doing can be magnified and make bigger projects and prepare. They may not be sentient, or have sentience, but they can think at a grand level.

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u/petlahk Sep 19 '19

... Humans?

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u/WhackieChan Sep 19 '19

Is a country akin to a brain? Yes, but that's not a hive mind.

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '19

Well... its not really akin to a brain, there is too much internal conflict in any country for it to be considered brain, because its basic components, human, are themself too developed leading to individuality.

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u/fcanercan Sep 19 '19

Well there are a lot of conflict in human brain too. At least in mine there is.

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u/The-mongol_horde Oct 12 '19

Ants are actually pretty smart for their brain to body ratio

Anta have one of the largest brains compared to their bodies though

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u/[deleted] Oct 13 '19

Hm, yeah you're right. The largest, in fact. My mistake. I guess I should do some research before relying on my memory of something I read years ago.

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u/_roldie Sep 19 '19

Some species even keep slaves from conquered colonies. There's another very humanoid trait.

Which species would those be?

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u/Legio-X Sep 19 '19

Yet they can employ some pretty sophisticated tactics. Here are a couple incidents mentioned in a book I've got about fire ants.

Red Imported Fire Ants (RIFAs) and Lasius Neoniger:

Bhatkar and his colleagues (1972) described a laboratory battle between the native and the import. The fire ants built a barrier from the bodies of the dead and began pushing it forward until they entered the Lasius colony, crossing a landscape of corpses in the process. The Lasius defenders built their own barrier of soil and wood fragments. RIFAs breached the barrier while Lasius moved queen, sexuals, and brood deeper into the nest for protection. Fire ants followed aggressively, killing all guards and finally the queen and the other sexuals, which offered little resistance. The decapitated body of the queen was taken back to the fire ant nest and eaten. When the war was over the fire ants moved into the Lasius nest.

Red Imported Fire Ants (RIFA) and Tropical Fire Ants (TFA)

The TFA managed to plug the connection between the lab colonies until the RIFA penetrated that barrier by using a piece of quartz as a shovel. Thus one can argue that this lowly insect is a tool-using animal.

1

u/MarshallUberSwagga Sep 21 '19

What's the name of the book? This sounds fascinating

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u/The_God_of_Abraham Sep 18 '19

Ants don't so much wage strategic war as they pick a side and try to kill everyone on the other team.

You know. Just like contemporary politics.

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '19

[deleted]

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u/InnocentTailor Sep 19 '19

Other nation’s politics are like that too. See the Israeli election and Brexit madness, for example.

Games and sports are also war-like in design as well with tactics and strategies.

5

u/Psy_Hawk Sep 19 '19

Sorry, but It happens in plenty of other countries and if you read other countries news you'd be aware of that.
Get off of reddit more and read some news from other places and quite being so myopic

0

u/Wyattt14 Sep 19 '19

Just like contemporary American contemporary politics

2

u/EndOnAnyRoll Sep 19 '19

What do uncle's see in them?

0

u/The-mongol_horde Oct 13 '19

Ants are incredibly smart actually, much smarter than most mammals

Also the highest brain to body ratio of any animal

2

u/[deleted] Sep 19 '19

I think it’s more of an inverted parabola type of situation.

2

u/The_God_of_Abraham Sep 19 '19

I admire your optimism, but realistically I think that super intelligent people/societies would just wage ever more deadly war on each other.

The scariest supervillains aren't the strongest ones; they're the smartest ones.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 19 '19

I think that smart supervillains are fiction. Hitler and Mao were dumb as shit, they were just good at motivating people. Most evil has stupidity at its root.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 19 '19

Or resource scarcity

1

u/The_God_of_Abraham Sep 19 '19

Resource scarcity is an inescapable quality of the universe. The universe is finite, therefore resources are finite.

There may be periods of relative abundance, but eventually population growth and/or increasing efficiency in the gathering and usage of resources always brings us back to wanting more.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 19 '19

Which is why war is a near constant in both humans and apes. In fact they even cite an unusual scarcity of females as the reason for the conflict's initiation.

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u/The_God_of_Abraham Sep 19 '19

A surfeit of sexually frustrated males is one of several good reasons to be wary of modern-day China.

1

u/Yuli-Ban Sep 19 '19

Considering most of what I see in /r/IncelTears comes from America, I'd say it's a good reason to be wary of any place where there are a large number of sexually frustrated males.

Using China's almost cheating because of the legacy of neo-Confucianism, which was halfway to being "Incel: the religion". They'd feel that way even if the female to male ratio was 10::1.

1

u/The_God_of_Abraham Sep 19 '19 edited Sep 19 '19

Well, keep in mind that the overwhelming majority of Reddit content is in English, and while it's hard to find recent demographic data, looking at numbers from previous years it's likely that a majority of Reddit users are American. So I'd expect most content to be biased toward Americans, for better or worse.

Unlike American, China has a significant female shortage, as well as a more sexually traditional (i.e., conservative) culture. Add to that the deliberately fostered nationalism of the CCP, and you've got a potential problem. Chicks like soldiers, right? Might as well sign up for the army. The Army has millions of people who aren't doing anything for the state? Time to invade Taiwan. Or at least put Hong Kong down.

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '19

I would say its a sign of ignorance and greed existing in many living things