Alright so we all know quite well a human is no match for a chimpanzee. However, I’m wondering why chimpanzees don’t kill/main one another while playing/fighting for real. Is it because:
[ul]
[li]Being stronger, they’re also tougher - hey does this mean each organism’s strength and durability are related? Like we’re just strong enough to cause this amount of damage to other humans, but not to, say, remove limbs.[/li][li]They limit their strength on members of their species - this doesn’t seem likely, especially in fights for mates etc.[/li][li]No chances to, i.e. other chimp will react/fight back/escape.[/li][/ul]
Perhaps you need to watch a little more Discovery Channel- type shows.
Just google ‘wild chimps killing each other’ and you too, can find videos like this one. :rolleyes:
Caution… graphic (animal) violence
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPznMbNcfO8
I think that video is proving my point. I just see a group of chimps moving slowly and tugging at one another. They don’t even seem to be attacking the same chimp. And at 4:14, they run away. There’s no dead, dismembered body. It seems the victim only died 3 days later. This is no where near how I expect chimp vs human to be.
What you asked was… ‘Why don’t/can’t chimpanzees injure/kill one another?’
Did you listen to the narration of that video?
Also, watch more than one video, before you make a ‘final decision’. :rolleyes:
Yes, I’m asking why, in the video, a troop of >6 chimpanzees are unable to kill a lone chimpanzee. The narration doesn’t explain this. They can’t even do enough damage to prevent him: climbing a tree, climbing down, and walking away. So are they pulling their punches, or are humans just more delicate?
For reference, look at the damage to Charla Nash in 2009. Her fingers and face were destroyed. [url=Andrew Oberle: Chimp-attack student is so badly mauled his parents left traumatised | Daily Mail Online]Same with Andrew Oberle. Most of the damage inflicted by chimps appears to be bites, and although such bites can be severe, especially when cumulative, they aren’t likely to be immediately fatal. Biting doesn’t create as dramatic a video as punching: you don’t see the same big movements, like someone drawing an arm back to punch someone else in the face. For a victim-chimp in the wild with no access to medical care, a whole lot of biting means a whole lot of bleeding and infection. According to the video it took three days for that poor bastard animal to die, but in the end, yes, the cause of death was chimp attack.
One thing that may make it more difficult for one chimp to kill another is that the victim-chimp can bite back. Charla Nash’s face was destroyed by chimp bites, but that’s because she wasn’t good at biting back, and the attacking chimp knew it. In the chimp-on-chimp attack in the present video, for one chimp to bite another’s face is to risk reciprocation. So you take your time, choose carefully when/where to bite the victim so as to minimize the risk to yourself.
Yeah, I think it’s kind of like: did you see how my dog ripped that rabbit limb from limb? I wonder how come he didn’t do that when he was fighting with the next door neighbor’s dog?
To a chimp, we’re kind of like bunnies.
Chimps generally don’t kill other chimps in their own troops, but males go on border patrol and have been documented killing other chimps they encounter (not belonging to their troops). Chimps within a troop will sometimes kill baby chimps, and this is just not the males doing the killing-- females have been documented, too. Link.
As for injury, when there is a change in the hierarchy, especially at the top, there can be some serious injuries in the process.
However, I am not aware of any such documented cases of Bonobo violence. Just lots and lots of sex play.
Yeah a single video problably doesn’t prove anyones point.
If they are not hurting him badly, they are probably teaching him a lesson…
They do have a way to enforce rules.. punishment …berating, temporary exhile.. etc
As noted, chimps do kill other chimps. But they do so fairly rarely, for a number of reasons.
The first is that most primate combat is about posture and dominance, and not lethal intent. If dominance can be achieved without exposure to significant risk, then this is better.
Apart from humans, primates don’t fight with force multipliers. No rocks, sticks, or even fists. Without those enhancers (and realising that size is the only major discriminating factor between combatants), things are more evenly matched when two chimpanzees square up. This would be the case for humans, too, but we don’t live naked in a forest, we live in concrete paved cities with clothes and shoes and ways to multiply force to lethal levels, and the variation between individuals is much greater.
Primate social structures act to reduce tension to prevent destructive fighting. The ultimate example of this in the bonobos, where females use sex to distract and diffuse aggressive males. Other chimps use grooming activities. Groups where tensions are increasing tend to split which reduces the tension. As long as resource contention does not drive intergroup tensions, the new group can forge it’s own territory. However, as others have noted, hierarchical changes can be lethal or damaging to those involved.
And (as you ask), chimps are stronger than humans. They have bigger, stronger muscles, tendons and bones. This gives them strength that surpasses humans, and that strength reflects in the force it takes to hurt or injure them. But even then, just as it would take significant work and commitment for one human to kill another by direct grappling (without using techniques like punching or choking), the same applies for chimpanzees.
It’s really hard to kill an animal of similar size without tools or a human level undestanding of anatomy.
Which is why you see packs of males attaching single males from other troops. And they do kill them-- after they mutilate them. Chimps can be extremely vicious and brutal.
Because they do. If a chimpanzee troop finds a solo male from another troop then they will mutilate, kill and sometimes eat the lone male. One favored method of mutilation is castration with their bare hands, sometimes even before the male is dead.
There is a video of a troop of chimps (minus the alpha male) perched on the classic dead tree.
At the bottom is a female with an infant.
The narrator describes the following as only the second time this has been recorded:
The alpha male arrives, walks directly to the female, grabs the baby and starts climbing.
As it passes its buddies, it tears off a piece of the baby and gives it to him as a snack
He keeps one piece for himself to munchon in his perch at the top of the tree.
The female goes nuts but is not so stupid as to challenge the boss.
a quick google of “chomp infanticide” will get you started. Or cannibalism. Or war