keyser_soze

I was perusing sagan's "forgotten ancestors, when a sentence caught my eye. Page 286, "When an unfamiliar female is discovered in their territorychimps are known to seize her infant by the ankles and smash it against the rocks." A link that immediately entered the mind of sagan, as he footnotes the verse from psalms 137, 8 and 9 where the bible gleefully reports on this very action by the israelites. It would appear that we are not so evolved as some would think. Sagan's writing on the behaviour of monkeys and apes seems all too familiar to me, as I assume it would most people.

Comments?

sakrilege

On the flip (nice) side, there is the research by Frans de Waal and the book he wrote titled Good Natured, The origins of right and wrong in humans and other animals.

Jat

How about bonobos? Out of all of the primates they are the closes related to us and they also happen to be the least violent towards their own.

Doubting Didymus

Hmm? I believe bonobos and regular chimpanzees diverged after our own diversion. That would make them both equally close to humans, no more and no less.

keyser_soze

As a species, I would not conclude that we are non-violent. Sorry.

DMB

A lot of species seem to go in for killing infants of other males and then breeding with the mother. There is an obvious genetic advantage in this behaviour. It may help to explain why young children are often mal-treated by stepfathers.

keyser_soze

Indeed. One could easily extrapolate almost all of our current group and family dynamics from our cousins...to match our daily lives. We may operate at a higher level, but the programming is the same at the core. Monkeys exhibit sorrow, and lengthy mourning at the loss of a relative or child/parent...they exhibit anger and braggadacio with competitors/opponents, kindness for group members, compassion for other members of the troupe, etc. We are definately not so far removed as most like to think. Why the need to not be animals? We are so obviously not special...specialized yes, but not special in the sense of "Hey, look at me, I'm worthy to be the center of the universe". So much carnage so that a few people can feel they are more than they are.

MattofVA

people who positively mistreat stepchildren(as opposed to merely being indifferent) are just assholes. Plenty of stepparents are great(like mine). I don't know where all the horror stories come from( can anyone show statistics)Nobody I know with stepparents gets deliberately mistreated. But, some stepparents are indifferent if there is no bond at an early age. Isn't it integral to humanity that we can, if we actually try, overcome those instincts from our animal past? I have no respect for people who don't get past it(and they may be in the majority when it comes to some things).

Doubting Didymus

Naturally, even if evolution were to satisfactorily explain some human cruelty or other, it could never justify it. Our actions should be evaluated using reason without falling back on somthing so cheap as "my instincts made me do it". People who do so should be put on a level with those claiming that satan causes their actions, both by our legal systems and in the judements of our own personal ethical codes. Can you imagine the society where all actions are acceptable just because we have instincts that influence that action?

I'd also like to reiterate your call for statistics in the case of stepparent cruelty. Does anyone know of any? I'm sure there must be some, but the question is whether it outperforms the known cruelties of biological parents.

keyser_soze

That is indeed the question.