From: Wade T.Smith (wade_smith@harvard.edu)
Date: Tue 19 Nov 2002 - 22:56:26 GMT
Going ape
When it comes to the study of warfare, primatology has never commanded
much respect. Maybe it’s time it did.
BY CHRIS WRIGHT
http://www.bostonphoenix.com/boston/news_features/top/features/documents/02537776.
htm
In mid-September of this year, Harvard professor Richard Wrangham stood
before an audience at the university and told of a "startling" new
development in weapons technology. But the talk Wrangham gave that day
did not concern dirty bombs or weapons-grade anthrax. There was no
mention of Al Qaeda or Saddam Hussein. Instead, to the ominous opening
chords of Richard Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra, Wrangham faced his
rapt audience and produced ... a stick.
As instruments of destruction go, tree limbs aren’t generally held in
such esteem. But this wasn’t just any old tree limb. This was the tree
limb with which Imoso, a male chimpanzee in Uganda’s Kibale Forest, had
beaten the tar out of a female chimp named Outamba. In the space of a
few minutes, this thuggish, enterprising ape may have revolutionized
chimpanzee society. He certainly succeeded in turning the field of
primatology on its head.
"This is the first time any animal other than humans has been seen to
pick up clubs as weapons and use them against others of their own
species," explains Wrangham, a 54-year-old professor of biological
anthropology and world-renowned authority on chimpanzees. "This is the
first repeated hitting. This is picking up a stick and
wham-wham-wham-wham!"
Even more remarkable than the initial whamming, Wrangham adds, is the
fact that matters did not end there. In July 2000, a little over a year
after Imoso’s initial attack, a younger chimp named Johnny was seen
using a stick to beat another ape senseless. To date, five separate
incidents of weapons use have been recorded by Wrangham and his fellow
researchers. In this sense, Imoso’s makeshift club was the A-bomb of
sticks, the space-based laser beam of sticks.
Despite being a groundbreaking, even historic, development, the
discovery of weapon use among chimps garnered little in the way of press
coverage — which is perhaps understandable. At the time of Wrangham’s
Harvard talk, the country was consumed by the anniversary of the
September 11 attacks — not to mention the looming prospect of war with
Iraq. The fact that a few chimps had taken to beating each other over
the head with branches paled beside the terrible violence that seemed
about to engulf the world.
But then, when it comes to the study of warfare, primatology has never
commanded much respect. After all, it would seem that chimps, even those
who take up weapons against each other, have little bearing on the
current world crisis — with its complex web of religious, territorial,
and economic determinants. As if to drive this point home, a number of
Harvard professors were recently invited to contribute to a paper on
terrorism for the National Academy of Sciences. The School of Public
Health was represented in the report, as were the John F. Kennedy School
of Government and the chemistry and economics departments. No one,
though, thought of asking Dr. Wrangham what his research might lend to
the study.
But Wrangham insists he’s not losing any sleep over the snub. "I don’t
want to foist myself upon the debate," he says. "I think it’s important
that [primatologists] are not given a false air of authority to talk
about the specific political issues. I recognize that what I do is not
like physics, where you’re suddenly going to be able to develop
something — here’s your new lump of energy or your new medical device.
It’s extremely unlikely that you can use these studies in any immediate
practical sense."
Yet Wrangham is brimming with theories about September 11 and its
aftermath — many of them founded on what he has seen in the forests of
Kibale. "It seems to me that the most important contribution I can make
is to add to the sense of danger, the sense of realism," he says. "What
the chimpanzee studies are telling us is how easily natural selection
can favor these sorts of patterns of violence and how ridiculous it is
to think that if we can just persuade humans to be nice to each other,
then they will be. You have to take a very hard-headed approach to it."
Wrangham, who has been studying chimpanzees in the wild for over 30
years, certainly knows a thing or two about warfare — at least as it
pertains to apes. In the early ’70s, he was among the first
primatologists to note the tendency of chimpanzees to conduct so-called
lethal raids against neighboring groups — a momentous discovery. In his
1996 book Demonic Males (Houghton Mifflin), a study of chimpanzee
aggression, he describes one such attack:
The raiders rushed madly down the slope to their target. While Goliath
screamed and the patrol hooted and displayed, he was held and beaten and
kicked and lifted and dropped and bitten and jumped on.... His
aggressors showed their excitement in a continuous barrage of hooting
and drumming and charging and branch-waving and screaming.
While this scenario may sound nothing like modern human warfare,
Wrangham insists that the motives for the assault were the same as those
that drive conflicts among human societies: the acquisition of territory
and resources, the enhancement of status, and the sheer will to conquer.
"One of the amazing things is how there are these similarities between
nation-states and chimpanzees in a group," he says. "We are the only two
species of mammals who raid territories."
That humans and chimpanzees display similar patterns of behavior
shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise. Recent studies have shown that
the two species’ DNA make-up is about 99 percent identical. Indeed,
there are many primatologists who believe that modern-day chimps are a
fair representation of what our own ancestors must have looked like, and
acted like, six million years ago; Wrangham has often described the
animals as "time machines." "The underlying emotional systems that guide
humans," he says, "are almost certainly very similar to those that guide
chimpanzees."
The implications of this statement are troubling. If aggressive
chimpanzee behavior corresponds to our own aggressive behavior six
million years ago — and also to our behavior today — this implies that
our violent tendencies have persisted throughout our evolutionary
history. In other words, humans are hard-wired for violence. We’re stuck
with it. "There is that implication, that’s right," Wrangham says.
"We’re stuck with the propensity for violence, at least. That is the
slightly alarming thing about this. It is daunting."
Even more daunting is the fact that chimpanzees are not only capable of
the same kinds of group aggression that we are, they’re also capable of
the same kind of wanton barbarity. In Wrangham’s office there is a
picture of a corpse — a chimpanzee who has been set upon by aggressors.
The animal is lying face down, frozen into a kind of crucifixion pose,
as if he had died while being pinned down. Strips of skin have been
peeled from his body. He bears the marks of countless puncture wounds
and contusions. In another photograph, one of the victim’s blue-gray
testicles lies nestled in the brush. The chimpanzee had been tortured to
death.
Conventional wisdom holds that man’s propensity for sadistic violence is
a sickness, a horrible psychic quirk. Wrangham’s theories, though,
suggest that the inclination to commit extravagant atrocities is a part
of our biological make-up — a mechanism of natural selection. In the
light of Kibale’s marauding apes, the mob of teenage Milwaukee boys who
recently chased down and viciously beat a man to death were not an
aberration — they were simply engaging in the kind of territorial
violence that young males have engaged in since the dawn of our species.
Understandably, such theories do not enjoy widespread popularity.
In 1987 — 15 years after Wrangham first reported on warfare among
chimps — a group of scientists issued a document called the Seville
Statement on Violence. In the paper, the scientists declared that war
"is a product of culture," implying that, given a bit of cultural
tweaking, warfare can be eradicated.
"This seems to me to be foolish optimism," Wrangham says. "Even in the
scientific area, there’s a tendency to allow hope to overcome reason. So
you have people writing that humans are basically good and cooperative,
and where we have aggression and war it’s all an abnormal mistake that
we can easily overcome. I see that they would get a readier reception
than someone like me, and I understand that, because nobody wants bad
news. But it’s putting our heads in the sand. Therefore, it’s dangerous."
Richard Wrangham doesn’t immediately strike you as the troglodytic type.
Originally from Hertfordshire, England, Wrangham speaks in the clipped,
confident tones of an Oxbridge don (he attended both Oxford and
Cambridge). Balding and slightly rumpled, he is the picture of tweedy
intellectualism. His tales of Africa, though, point to the ease with
which men can slip back into their ape-like ways. "When you see these
[chimpanzee] battles, you feel incredibly pumped," he says. "It goes
right through your gut: these great balls of black fur racing through
the bush. It’s scary, but there’s also the thrill of us-against-them,
because, obviously, you want your side to win. It’s amazing how easily
our Western-derived tendencies for sympathy get eroded in the face of
these sorts of excitements."
His enthusiasm for this violence, though, may be less ape-like than it
is guy-like.
According to Wrangham, blame for the high levels of violence in
chimpanzee and human societies can be placed squarely at the feet of
males (hence Demonic Males). In the course of our evolution, he says,
aggressive males have enjoyed greater reproductive success; therefore,
the process of natural selection has favored violent behavior. By
extension, patriarchal societies exhibit similar tendencies. "America,
as the dominant power in the world, is involved in more aggressive
interactions than any other country," he says. "It’s the same with
chimpanzees: the alpha male is always involved in putting down threats
they see about them; they’re always breaking up alliances, challenging
rivals."
Furthermore, Wrangham says, the kind of low-risk warfare characterized
by a group of chimps launching a surprise attack on an individual — a
common tactic among the animals — is analogous to the low-risk warfare
favored by America’s modern military culture. A stick and a Stealth
bomber may be light-years apart in terms of technology, but both shift
the balance of power in favor of the individual — or nation — who wields
them.
In chimpanzee societies, Wrangham continues, conflict usually breaks out
as a result of power imbalances. Chimps, like the ones who ripped the
testicles from the unfortunate ape in Wrangham’s photographs, generally
will not attack in the absence of overwhelming force. The same principle
applies to men. When the US and the USSR faced off during the Cold War,
for instance, the balance of power between the two nations prevented
armed conflict. Today, the only thing preventing all-out war against
Iraq may be the fact that the US has so far failed to muster adequate
coalition support.
The fact that America is amassing forces in the Gulf region, then, may
be little more than an elaborate display — the equivalent of a chimp’s
chest-thumping and dirt-flinging. Or it may signal something more dire.
"The fascinating thing about the first Gulf War is this unresolved
status challenge," Wrangham says. "With chimps and humans, conflict
seems to be driven by more than simple strategic considerations. There
is this added level of concern over status. The people who are making
the decisions — Rumsfeld, Cheney — they are all part of this previous
victory that nonetheless did not lead to a resolve in status between the
leaders of the two countries. In chimpanzees, there is nothing that
predicts aggression so well as when there are unresolved status
challenges. It’s hard for me to say this is going to be peacefully
resolved unless Saddam Hussein makes some major concessions."
Even more ape-like, Wrangham says, is our ongoing conflict with Al
Qaeda. When the hijackers turned jets into missiles on September 11,
they may have been initiating a terrible new form of warfare, but they
were also reverting back to the kinds of lethal raids practiced by
chimps and, subsequently, pre-industrial man. "In primitive society,
this is what war consisted of," Wrangham says. "Setting fire to a hut
with 50 people in it, or attacking the World Trade Center." In an ironic
twist, the mighty American military machine — with all its
sophistication and firepower — has also reverted back to this primitive
form of warfare. The current emphasis on Special Operations missions —
with their covert actions and quick-hit raids — is a weirdly atavistic
military strategy, not so far removed from the stealthy chimp patrols in
Uganda.
"This is very alarming," Wrangham says. "Traditional warfare — mutual
raiding — is very difficult to stop. It is much more punishing on
everybody. There is just much more suffering. The ability to protect
against raids is something that predicts relative peacefulness. People
have to recognize that the old systems of protection are not going to be
adequate. This is the message from Al Qaeda. The message is that now
more than ever, we need a moral agreement in the world, because military
agreements and military tactics are going to be very ineffective against
mutual raiding."
He adds: "I accept the overall message that reality is tough."
Then, perhaps aware that his visitor is about to leap from the nearest
window, Wrangham provides a little glimmer of hope: "Overall, the
pattern of statehood and nation growth has led to reduced levels of
conflict," he says, though without much conviction. Wrangham also points
out that his Demonic Males presents "a nice balance: here’s the bad
news, here’s the good news." In fairness, after 250 pages of
testosterone-drenched strife, the book does end by reminding us that
human beings are also closely related to bonobos — petite, chimp-like
creatures who live in peaceful, matriarchal societies, and who would
much rather engage in lengthy and elaborate sexual encounters with each
other than fight. Even the book’s villains, male chimps, are partly
redeemed in the closing pages.
In May 1993, Wrangham reveals in his book’s final chapter, he looked on
with fascination and delight as Kakama, a two-year-old chimp, dragged a
little lump of wood behind him — "like Christopher Robin with
Winnie-the-Pooh. Bump bump bump." For the entire day, Kakama went to
great pains to hang on to his piece of wood, and at one point tenderly
placed it in a little nest he had built. "I had just watched a young
male chimpanzee invent and then play with a doll," Wrangham writes. "A
doll!" Today, Kakama’s little log-doll resides in a glass case at the
Peabody Museum, just downstairs from Wrangham’s office. Recently, the
artifact was joined by a few others: a collection of ordinary,
harmless-looking sticks.
Chris Wright can be reached at cwright@phx.com
Issue Date: November 14 - 21, 2002
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