Study: Chimpanzees Have Evolved To Kill Each Other 224
sciencehabit writes A major new study of warfare in chimpanzees finds that lethal aggression can be evolutionarily beneficial in that species, rewarding the winners with food, mates, and the opportunity to pass along their genes. The findings run contrary to recent claims that chimps fight only if they are stressed by the impact of nearby human activity—and could help explain the origins of human conflict as well.
No surprise (Score:4, Informative)
Most animals fight for mates. The only reason they don't kill each other is it's tougher for them to be lethal about it. But if a moose could head-butt another moose into oblivion to win a mate, I've no doubt it would do it.
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Re:No surprise (Score:4, Interesting)
As any male should know who went to high school. What do you think all that bullying was about? Guys were showing their dominance to win females. Those same urges were why it was so hard for the guys being picked on to just shrug it off or ignore it - how can a male shrug off being humiliated in front of potential mates?
Re:No surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
What about the bullying that goes on in single sex schools?
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It's dominance, regardless, which can factor into mate selection. If a queen bee expresses a high level of dominance in an all-female environment that dominance will influence the dominated females in mixed-sex environments. While her behavior won't directly influence males it will influence females in such a way that they wouldn't interfer with her selection. Likewise, if she has friend who are still lower her but able the rabble, they will also act in a way to secure the queen's conquest.
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Alpha dominance and hierarchy
Which turns out not to be a great mating strategy. Genetic testing of animal species that live in alpha male/harem social structures has shown that quite a few offspring are fathered by males hanging around the periphery of the group.
Chimpanzees, bonobos and humans have reproductive strategies and social groupings that make the identification of female estrus and control over their mating at the critical time extremely difficult. So they develop kinship bonds. The children are most probably the offspring o
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As any male should know who went to high school. What do you think all that bullying was about?
Homoerotic tendencies?
Re: No surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no such thing as "right" or "wrong" in nature and no delusions of morality can change that.
Re: No surprise (Score:4, Informative)
There is no such thing as "right" or "wrong" in nature and no delusions of morality can change that.
Don't be silly. Traits such as altruism, empathy, and a sense of justice are also evolutionarily advantageous, and have just as much of a Darwinian origin as dominance and brute force.
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All three of those can be used for right or wrong.
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Re:No surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's the funny thing folks, humans are animals too!
As far as anyone can tell humans have a much greater ability to engage in complex planning: to make decisions based on sophisticated predictions of future consequences from an array of different actions. If you're hanging out with your friend in your living room and he has to go to the bathroom, most likely he'll make some initial assessments of his options, gather more information to increase the accuracy of his predictions: "Would you mind if I used your bathroom? Actually, better use the one off the master bedroom the one down the hall isn't flushing very well these days.", and then act on his predictions. On the other hand, if you have a horse over to hang out in your living room then pretty soon you'll be up to your ankles in horse manure.
We have all the same urges and evolutionary pressures,...
Except that with our complex planning it's actually easy to satisfy our evolutionary urges without needing to resort to violence. And we're also able to realize that evolution is a natural law like gravity. That having children in order to be evolutionarily successful is like throwing oneself down a flight of stairs in order to be gravitationally successful - that evolution isn't what should happen - it's what does happen.
...a brain big enough to develop ... violence ... to fill the hole that our self abstinence from murder has left.
No. People engage in violence when they're not able to find any other way to satisfy their (evolutionary) needs. Typically, the people who engage in violence are the ones with the brains that are too "small" - which isn't to say that smart people are never backed into a corner where violence is the only option. But most people who use violence do so because they are unable to make good predictions about all the possible actions and consequences available to them.
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Some researchers ha
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... and why does the quote tag not work in fucking /. beta??? :-/
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When's the last time you chased down and killed your food? When's the last time you actually used physical violence against another human, much less a prey species?
We're our most violent in aggregate (war). Most recent 'wars' were/are over ideals or perceived threats (we don't like what you're doing to your people, so we're gonna invade), not actual physical threats (WWII was an actual imminent threat). We're not so bad when we don't _have_ to use violen
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If that is so, then why are we by far the most violent and aggressive species on earth?
Lots of species more violent and aggressive then us, we often co-operate while lots of other species never co-operate and just try to kill each other if they find themselves in the same territory. Siamese Fighting Fish is one example, put two males together and they fight.
We are better at violence then other species due to our use of tools.
Re:No surprise (Score:5, Interesting)
But when the battle becomes group against group the advantage of mercy is less clear. An enemy left alive has more choices. Rather than accepting that he can't defeat you he may come back with larger numbers. He may jump up and hit you from behind as soon as you turn to battle one of his companions.
In an environment of tribal warfare, it doesn't make sense to kill your local intra-tribal rival because he's likely to be your ally in the next inter-tribal battle.
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That's tactics, not psychology. During the 2nd world war most soldiers did not want to kill enemy soldiers because they saw them as fellow humans.
http://www.military-sf.com/Kil... [military-sf.com]
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That's tactics, not psychology. During the 2nd world war most soldiers did not want to kill enemy soldiers because they saw them as fellow humans.
That claim keeps getting repeated without any good evidence. Anyone who's actually studied history knows that it's complete bullshit. Human beings have been participating in organized murder and genocide for thousands of years. We have archaeological evidence of mass slaughter on every continent, amongst every major ethnic group. Plus we have evidence of lovely post-death atrocities such as scalping, ritualized slaughter, and even cannibalism; things which only further illustrate how unlikely it is for
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The idea that soldiers on the battlefield are reluctant to shoot at each other is complete nonsense.
Actually it's pretty well supported by data. In fact, it's one of the reasons veteran units are so dangerous. Most of the members are actually trying to kill you instead of just shooting in your general direction.
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Actually, I read in Will and Ariel Durant's Story of Civilization that every prehistoric community practice cannibalism. When you fought the neighboring tribe for access to hunting/gathering grounds, there was no need to spare them. You killed them and ate them. You couldn't keep them as slaves because there was nothing for them to do that's helpful to you. You'd have to give them weapons to hunt which would be used against you. It wasn't until the invention of agriculture when you could force people to sta
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Most animals fight for mates.
Fighting for mates is always one vs one, winner take all, and yes they are trying to kill their opponent. War as practised by humans and chimps is fundementally different, it is a coordinated social activity most animals simply don't comprehend let alone practice.
Re:No surprise (Score:5, Interesting)
War as practised by humans and chimps is fundementally different, it is a coordinated social activity most animals simply don't comprehend let alone practice.
Two words: "kin selection".
Humans and chimps are social primates. We live in groups that are relatively close to us, genetically, although humans practice exogamy (mating outside their immediate kin group) a lot more aggressively than any of our cousins.
So to say "fighting for mates is always one vs one" is to say "kin selection does not exist", which it manifestly does.
War is mate competition carried out by other means. There is no other rational for it (war is always economically irrational, although this is not generally understood because it "just makes sense" to so many people that war is somehow a good idea.)
No individual of any species ever under any circumstances kills another member of the same species for any reason other than mate competition, either for themselves or for close kin (this is not quite true, but it should be the starting point of any analysis of deadly interpersonal violence.) Killing has zero to do with hunting behaviour--both male and female bonobos hunt, and don't kill each other. Elk are vegetarian, and do kill each other. Only when reproduction is on the line does the risk of being killed in a potentially deadly fight make evolutionary sense, in humans as well as in other species.
In humans, war creates all kinds of mating opportunities beyond the simple-minded "conquer the enemy and rape their women" scenario. In particular, it creates opportunities on the home front of all kinds, and that is a very fundamental part of its completely irrational appeal.
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I guess this explains China lusting after Taiwan.
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Mate selection is just one reason. Controlling resources is another.
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From an evolutionary perspective, this is meaningless.
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Hardly.
How is pride anything else than a costly signal that you're virile enough?
From an evolutionary perspective that would be very meaningful.
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I take your point, but: the real point here then is giving the appearance of being a high-quality mate. 'Pride' is just a high-level construct of the species, not a fundamental force affecting the success of the genes.
One cannot meaningfully use 'pride' as an explanation, when we're discussing behaviour from an evolutionary perspective, any more than one can use love, generosity, angry, or envy: they're all just 'implementation details'.
From an evolutionary perspective, we run from danger to maximise our ef
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How is 'pride' anything more than a word we give to this emotional drive to maintain status?
It appears to me that you're nitpicking on the word GPP used for being overly broad, for not digging deep enough, though you dismiss it with a quite broad wave.
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You speak in bold assertive tones about studies and ideas (including kin selection) as if they were established truths.
You claim there is no other rational reason for war, while there is an entire rich field of study on the possible motivations for war amongst hu
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And, yea, let's get onto that untruth - that war is somehow always economically irrational. Seizing buffer lands, trade routes, ports, or natural resources is hardly irrational.
And back in the day, slaves. Tired of working you fields? Gather up the men, invade the neighboring tribe and capture their people. Takes you a few days, maybe a week. Now you can sit back and let these people till your fields for the rest of their lives. Slavery is extremely economically advantageous.
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When food gets scarce, don't some animals kill off and/or eat some of their young?
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To be fair, most animals don't allow multiple males to lead the herd/pack/whatever, so it's harder for them to form an attack troupe like humans or chimps do. Yes, there are exceptions, but when those packs encounter another pack it's just as vicious a battle. And they will gang up on a lone intruder as well.
I don't think humans or chimps are as "special" as a lot of people would like to believe them to be. We're just tool-using animals at the root of it all.
Re:No surprise (Score:5, Informative)
Fighting for mates is always one vs one, winner take all, and yes they are trying to kill their opponent.
Not true. In many animals, fights are intentionally non-lethal. Much like a fistfight, when both have knives. But if one unsheathes their claws (or whatever real weapon), then the other will too and they both run the risk of being maimed or killed. This works because the non-lethal dominance competition correlates pretty well with what would happen if they were fighting for real.
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Recent claims by whom? (Score:5, Insightful)
What a load of PC "humans are the only baddies in the world" bollocks.
Chimpanzees have a well documented history of intra-group hierarchical violence, violence against females and extra-group murdering raids. This is nothing new. Anthropologists have known this stuff for decades.
Re:Recent claims by whom? (Score:5, Informative)
What a load of PC "humans are the only baddies in the world" bollocks.
Chimpanzees have a well documented history of intra-group hierarchical violence, violence against females and extra-group murdering raids. This is nothing new. Anthropologists have known this stuff for decades.
Dolphins too. Including infanticide of a rival's offspring. Raping of females, its a gang thing too as accomplices restrict the females ability to flee.
Re:Recent claims by whom? (Score:5, Funny)
Jeez, what a bunch of animals!
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Lions too. When a new male takes over a pack, many times the cubs are killed. Sometimes by the male, sometimes by the females. If the last mate wasn't strong enough to stay in power, then his cubs are likely inferior as well.
Not exactly. The new Male lion kills the previous one's cubs to ensure that the pride females comes to heat much quickly and he can distribute his genes before he becomes old and driven out by another new Male.
Re:Recent claims by whom? (Score:4, Interesting)
This works exactly the same with cats. This happened to us one time and 4 out of 5 newborn kittens were killed by an adult male (we arrived before he could finish his job). Surely enough a few days later the female came to heat again and that bastard took his share of it...
Re:Recent claims by whom? (Score:4, Funny)
It's almost like lions and cats are both felines!
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Just like dolphins ! ;-)
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Wait ...
So dolphins are catfish?
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"All the hippies need to get over it and come back to reality."
The reality is that evolution isn't finished. We are possibly evolving into something much greater than what came before. Steven Pinker exhibits that the human race has overall experienced a decline in violence in the recent past. (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/history-and-the-decline-of-human-violence/)
Maybe the reality is that the hippies were right.
Re: Recent claims by whom? (Score:3, Insightful)
Or something worse. The decline in violence is due to factors like reduced rewards and likelihood of punishment. Remove those and humans go back to their nature. The hippies were deluded fools. Those of them who have not committed suicide out of depression are now unashamed capitalists.
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It sounds like you just made that up. What evidence do you base that on?
The good side of humans is part of our nature as well, and according to the trend it is an increasing part of our nature. Did you even bother to look at the article I linked?
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So, in other words you didn't read the article.
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You should read the article I linked. It's much longer range than three or four generations.
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When a male lion takes over a pride, they kill the cubs of their predecessor
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Yeah, but that was just because they were ugly cubs.
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What the tree huggers will find even more horrifying than chimp warfare is how lions kill baby lions.
True story. When the alpha male of a lion pride is challenged by another male lion and loses, the new lion takes over the pride. This happens inevitably as the the former alpha lion ages. Now the new head lion will often KILL all the lion cubs in the pride. Not because he's hungry, but because he doesn't like the fact that the baby lions are not his.
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No, he does it so that in the future, when he's no longer strong, and the baby alphas are now alpha, like their papa, are going to do to him what he did to their father. It's simply eliminating (future) competitors so he and his descendants can rule for as long as possible.
This was quite common when kings ruled around the world -- surprising similarity between kings and lions.
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Sounds like a normal game of Crusader Kings.
Re:Recent claims by whom? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Recent claims by whom? (Score:5, Funny)
Those kind of people have never been owned by a cat. A brain the size of walnut generates the capacity to play, sulking when ownee admonishes it, buttering up the ownee for treats, etc. And then there is the room and board issue, it turns out most cats have a degree in financial services.
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Still, though, my cat has never figured out he will never catch the Red Dot of Mystery.
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What a load of PC "humans are the only baddies in the world" bollocks.
Chimpanzees have a well documented history of intra-group hierarchical violence, violence against females and extra-group murdering raids. This is nothing new. Anthropologists have known this stuff for decades.
In Matthew Lieberman's [wikipedia.org] book Social, he has a chapter on this.
Especially entertaining is what he wrote regarding the bonobos. They are essentially the free love orgy and hippies of the primate world. And, chimps are the violent and brutal ones.
So, whatever the primates do, there isn't a definite reflection on humans. We all share the fact that society and social connections are the most important things in our lives but it can go in multitude of directions - from hippie to killers.
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There was a question? (Score:2)
Uuugg (Score:2)
But that's 72 ugly virgins [cracked.com]
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OMG! It's a monkey version of Tammy Faye Baker!
Huh (Score:3)
Known for a long time (Score:5, Informative)
You see this from the anti-hunting and lunatic PETA crowd. "Humans are the only species that kill for pleasure or kill for reasons other than survival". Bill Maher (PETA member) said it several times last season of his Real Time show. Yet everything from orca whales to monkeys to domestic cats kills for reasons other than day-to-day survival.
They kill for fun, for the adrenaline rush, for sport, for territory, and sometimes simply out of instinct or curiosity. Cats leave trophies on their owners' back porches. They'll kill birds and mice and even bats and then leave the dead body for their owner to find. Killer whales just slaughter packs of seals for fun. Often times just killing them and not even eating them. Some animals are so naturally deadly like sharks that they cannot help killing something by simply "test" biting an animal to see if its good food. A shark bites a human but realizes the flesh is poor and there are too many bones, so it backs off for good, yet the human is dead because half his stomach and leg were chewed off entirely by the shark.
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Of course, there's an apologist for everything: http://www.wolfs [wolfsongnews.org]
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There speaks a Fox News fan!
No, a "Real Time with Bill Maher" on HBO fan. Its a great show, the guests/debate often interesting, but fact filled when Bill is speaking -- not quite.
"could help explain the origins of human conflict" (Score:3, Insightful)
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First, it is the "origin," not now. It gives us a what-if on human behavior.
Second, they can watch chimps do things to each other that would be considered an ethical violation if a study let humans act in a similar way.
Third, humans have been studied a lot, you have to be quite creative to get another ounce out of what is already in the literature. Chimps, not studied as much, so there are more opportunities to learn stuff.
Chimps... George Bush... (Score:5, Interesting)
But seriously, primate research is worthwhile on it's own. You can't directly prove connections between us and them; but that is not unlike a huge amount of science which relies upon observation, statistics and expert judgement calls. When they act similar that can be a clue or merely a coincidence but it warrants further investigation. It's a technique that allows for faster probing of the problem space. BESIDES, if you think that observing chimps influences their behavior (as the "skeptics" denier fanatics always claim) just imagine trying to study humans! Humans are way more difficult to study without influencing their behavior thereby tainting the study.
The biological connection is obvious; any "insights" they do in the research with a biological connection become useful even if at 1st they seem unjustified. The work can be applied in new ways later on if one proves there is no connection.
As far as pure human nature study by primate research; well, that is based upon theories which may or may not be proven some day in the future. You have the classic old Feud work on "base desires" which think about the primitive instinctive aspects behind the manifestations; his work in this area is the basis for modern propaganda (WW1 and really big after the Nazis used it so well. Today, it controls most consumers.) Following that success, one could approach further from that perspective - making our relation to primates and their more primitive state ideal.
Ultimately, I think most the work in the area ends up with the search for biological parallels between us. Say that HATE is really just a manifestation of FEAR; can you ever prove such a thing? nope. not in a hard science way; it's all subjective. But if you can study primates you might find more concrete proof with them on a biological level. A Turing machine is a lame computer nothing like your CPU but it's useful to prove things (the difference being that you can concretely prove the CPU is equivalent to the Turing machine and you can't with a chimp since they evolved differently even if they are nearly the same DNA.)
As far as evolutionary pressures-- the best theory for human brains was we already made it to the top of the food chain being as primitive as chimps and what made the apes of the plains smart was that they had to war against each other for resources. Just like humans have always done; my tribe and me against you and your tribe. Given how we are the most evolved distance running animals on earth, territorial borders are meaningless. Your group isn't going to give up after running down a lion to exhaustion for 20miles simply because you ended out of your usual turf.
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Amazing Revelation (Score:2)
In evolution, winners win!
The world is now a more enlightened place.
Re:Not just Chimps and Humans (Score:4, Interesting)
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IMHO wild canid (i.e. wolf) pack mentality and hierarchy is much more complex and nuanced than the primate model, I'd even go out o a limb and say it's probably much more "evolved". Wolves are highly social, even more so than most primates, and exhibit a mosaic of harder-to-describe interaction such as pity, shame, the ability to "agree yo disagree", vastly intricate verbal and nonverbal communication (moreso than most animals) - shown most obviously in the number of different howls ...and practiced decept
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Not with monkey hands, but I'm sure the NRA can come up with a triggering mechanism they can use.
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No, they need to come up with a triggering mechanism for grizzly paws. After all, don't we have a second amendment right to armed bears?
Granted, I might need to reread that section a bit.
Re:Wake me when chimpanzees invent smelting (Score:5, Insightful)
{Wake me when chimpanzees invent smelting} ... and cast weapons made of metal from molds that they manufactured themselves, just so they can kill more effectively.
Hard to tell what point(s) you're attempting to make here.
So, is killing efficiency your yardstick?
I don't see how efficiency relates. Heck, there are species of marine life who eat the egg-clusters and hatchlings of their competitors, and that's upwards of tens of thousands or more.
Or is it the use of tools to kill?
Chimps and other apes will often pick up a branch to swing at another when they are angry/aggressive. Other examples of tool-use by apes is abundant. Google will supply you with examples.
Seems in that regard the only difference is the level of sophistication of the tools/weapons related to the differing complex intellectual levels of the two species.
No doubt if apes had a similar size brain and intellectual capability as humans, the technical level of their weapons would rise as well.
Many people like to attribute some sort of "perfect moral innocence" to animals while humans are somehow forever separate from animals and that all human effects upon animals are "unnatural" and inherently bad and wrong. They also tend to decry human behaviors that have roots in our animal nature as somehow evil and unnatural.
It's an emotional response motivated by compassion and I appreciate that. However, humans are just as natural on Earth as deer or whales. Everything will always effect everything else, and species will go extinct and new species arise as long as life exists.
Since our self-awareness and intelligence and ability to control our environment allows us to avoid natural systems of regulation, we must consciously choose to find a balance between not causing undue harm to animals and nature while not placing undue limitations on the advancement of humanity towards moving outwards into space.
Earth is not a perpetual-motion machine, and we need to leave the cradle. Humanity cannot afford to hunker down, slow progress, and ration out ever-dwindling resources. That's a recipe for extinction.
Balance is the key.
Balance will not be found at the extremes.
Strat
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Mere modification of a natural object is not sufficient... it must be modified by unnatural means, which means specifically employing something outside of one's own natural capabilities to make something more fit for purpose than it otherwise would be, which in the case of smelting and making cast weapons, would be fire.
Call that a moved goalpost if you want to, but I never laid any claim to any other standard. Human ancestors leaned how to control fire to achieve productive ends over a hundred thousand
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it must be modified by unnatural means
"Unnatural means" is extremely ill-defined, and in common understanding it's by unavailable to nonhumans *by definition*, not because of a shortcoming of the animals. You look up antonyms for "natural" and one of the first is "man-made".
Fire is a particularly interesting choice of discriminator, because it is a natural phenomenon that happens all the time. You of course mean a contained fire that was intentionally instigated by chimpanzees.
Regardless, I'm missing the point of this argument -- you said to
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If some creature, without having been ever been trained or taught how to do it by a human being, formed a weapon-shaped mould out of plaster or ceramic, and then went and melted down some metal to get it into a liquid state, which it would pour into the mould, and waited for the molten metal to solidify before trying to use it as a weapon that is more effective than what they can do with their natural limbs, then I would say that the weapon was produced by non-natural mean, whether or not it was a human be
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That depends on how you 'put them together'.
Chimps and bonobos became differentiated by the environment that they came to occupy. Chimps live in territory where their food resources are subject to competition from gorillas. Bonobos live in territory where there is no such stress. And no need to fight over scarce resources.
In the short term, chimps would beat bonobos. But given time to evolve, either the chimps or bonobos would evolve to accomodate the environment into which they were placed.
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