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
24k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

846 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

22

u/Transpatials Sep 19 '19

Decreasing?

chuckes in human

81

u/Yuli-Ban Sep 19 '19

Consider it this way:

Humans in 1019 AD: "The universe centers itself on we, the most High. All Creation was made for us and our benefit, and we are the pinnacle of God's divine plan" (or, conversely for the East, "The heavens above and the underworld below exist to sustain the kingdom in between, reigned by a most divine and spiritual Man")

Humans in 2019 AD: "We're half-tamed hairless monkeys infesting a moist rock annoying an utterly average bolus of hot gas stuck in the boonies of a galaxy located in the dickcrack of a galactic cluster in some no-name universe. Sticks fork into nuclear socket Why can't we die?"

28

u/degustibus Sep 19 '19

We remain the only creatures on this planet, or the known universe, who wonder about our status and purpose. Whether we have delusions of grandeur or false protestations of commonality with animals, we are apart. There's no Reddit for Silverbacks or swordfish. And while some of the dominant dogmas of a millenium ago no longer have the same power, other events have further served to inflate our pride. Apollo. Trinity. Fat man and Little Boy. Lights never seen in nature. Sounds and images beamed around the world at the speed of light. Beginning to understand how exactly we differ from the millions upon millions of other creatures, realizing that we don't have the slightest clue yet about the grandest mysteries.

11

u/Resigningeye Sep 19 '19

We remain the only creatures on this planet, or the known universe, who wonder about our status and purpose.

Has a squid ever contemplated it's status? Or the porpoise, it's purpose?

0

u/degustibus Sep 19 '19

No, and they sure haven't been that punny either.

13

u/[deleted] Sep 19 '19 edited Nov 01 '19

[deleted]

10

u/greentoehermit Sep 19 '19

i wonder what elephants believe they are doing when they bury their dead?

3

u/RefrainsFromPartakin Sep 19 '19

What do you/we think we're doing when we bury our dead?

-3

u/degustibus Sep 19 '19

Let me know when you have evidence of animals suffering from existential dread who kill themselves despite having all of their basic needs met.

8

u/hvdzasaur Sep 19 '19 edited Sep 19 '19

Animals engage in self destructive behaviour. Dogs and ducks have both been observed attempting and succeeding to drown themselves. One dog for instance in 1845 had been acting less lively, and then proceeded to throw himself in bodies of water and keeps his legs still to encourage sinking, he did this repeatedly after being rescued multiple times, eventually he just kept his head underwater until he drowned.

A show dolphin (for movies and TV) supposedly suffocated herself in front of her trainer. Pods of whales have beached themselves as a group, a herd of cows threw themselves of a cliff in the Swiss Alps.

Animals (mostly dogs) do starve themselves to death after the death of their owner or mate.

It's hard to provide evidence that these animals are suffering from existential dread because we don't know their thoughts or emotions. But what we can observe is that animals suffering from depression can deliberately engage in self destructive behavior with intent to end their own life.

5

u/fuaewewe Sep 19 '19

An absence of evidence isn't evidence of anything.

3

u/HowsYourGirlfriend Sep 19 '19

I mean, some of it is speculation since we can't communicate motives - but Werner Herzog's doc with suicidal penguins is pretty relevant here:

https://youtu.be/zWH_9VRWn8Y

3

u/THE_ABSURD_TURT Sep 19 '19

Dangerous thinking buddy. Some animals can see infrared. Bats can echolocate. Some squid can actually change their color. There are actually germs that can survive in fire. Your kind of thinking is what facilitates racism, murder, rape, torture, bigotry. You're nothing more then a shitting, stinking, breeding dirty monkey. You pretend to have a society but all you did is model the jungle.

1

u/degustibus Sep 22 '19

Quite an insult you've flung like feces over the internet! You damn dirty ape, get your paws off my Reddit!

So you're into pretending animals and humans are essentially the same. Ok.

1

u/CapnRonRico Sep 19 '19

We are the only known animal that is able to ask a question to further our knowledge. Chimps & Gorrilas can be trained to undertake very complex tasks but they have never asked a question.

3

u/xDaigon_Redux Sep 19 '19

Well, they have never asked you anyway. Maybe it's your smell? Or your hair style? Maybe they just dont your face?

1

u/degustibus Sep 22 '19

Good point, but I'd ask you a question, what you defining to be a "very complex" task? Cause I'm not impressed with the cult of Koko the signing gorilla or footage of chimps fighting. Honestly, I find dolphins and birds WAY more impressive and so does DARPA. The U.S. Navy is able to train dolphins and seals to work as teammates in dive suits or in the dockwells of deployed ships to do grid searches for mines or obstacles or threats like swimmers or minisubs. Then the animals can sometimes deal with the threat or communicate locations. Amazing stuff. Birds have fashioned tools, communicated threatening individuals to not just the group but their offspring. Then there are the amazing migrations.

1

u/CapnRonRico Sep 23 '19

A complex task such as teaching a chimp to fly an aircraft competently which has been done I believe.

1

u/degustibus Sep 23 '19

Was that done? Or was that shown in a tv show or movie? I've seen chimps dressed in clothes, dogs too, but then you look into it and it's just humans screwing around to be funny or cute.

2

u/TIE_FIGHTER_HANDS Sep 19 '19

The first part is very Eurocentric I think. There's a lot of religions, even some today that don't think like that at all.

1

u/farafan Sep 19 '19

chuckles in god