What a Brazilian monkey tells us about the rockets’ red glare

Image by Douglas Ed Rocha via Flickr

With bombs bursting in air this Fourth of July weekend, it’s a good time to think again about why we like bombs so much. And there’s more evidence this week that spectacular bloodlust has everything to do with environmental resources.

The American Journal of Primatology published a study of the muriqui, formerly believed to be one of the most peaceful of primates, after scientists observed a group of muriqui in the Brazilian rainforest attacking and killing one of their own. What they found tells us as much about ourselves as it tells us about monkeys.

It turns out that only the northern populations of muriqui, who dine on leaves that surround them in abundance, love peace. Southern populations of muriqui live in forests that produce more fruit, which alters everything about their social dynamic. New Scientist published a nice synopsis of the research this morning:

Because fruit is widely dispersed, females detach from the main group to locate it, making them less available for sex with the males than in the north where everyone stays together to eat leaves.

Lacking ready mates, males may become frustrated, creating mutual tension and aggression. Also, muriqui males bond closely for life with male siblings and relatives. Filippo Aureli of Liverpool John Moores University, UK, says that this facilitates “gang” attacks, as closely bonded males are in a strong position to victimise an individual.

If this plucks a primordial string as you read it, it may be because deep human history runs roughly parallel to the muriqui experience. In 1996, Harvard anthropologist Richard Wrangham published “Demonic Males,” a study of the difference between species of primates that evolved on opposite banks of the Zaire River.

On one side, where food was abundant, evolved the peaceful bonobo. On the other side, where competition for food was fierce, evolved the chimpanzee and the chimps’ next-closest cousin, the human.

Chimps and humans share “patrilineal, male-bonded communities” much like the violent Southern muriqui. Chimps and humans also share murder, rape and warlike behavior. Thus forged in the jungle, one of those species evolved to create the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air.

Bonobos, which are smaller but otherwise almost identical to chimps, live in peaceful matrilineal societies where resources are shared and disputes are resolved by the females through creative, one might even say “loving,” acts of conflict resolution.

I first wrote about Wrangham’s research in the wake of the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building, and in response to Gov. Frank Keating’s absurd but widely quoted statement that “whoever did this is an animal.”

At the time I believed it might be enough for us, as a species, to usurp our patrilineage, to elect women. But having observed the pace of evolution along that front, on an increasingly fevered planet, I’ve come to believe we need to take a much bigger step, and let’s hope we don’t have to do it through a million years of evolution, because we’re running out of time.

We have to get rid of what Wrangham calls “ingroup-outgroup bias,” the tendency of humans, chimps–and now, we learn, muriqui–to form competing groups that demonize opponents. Think White Sox vs. Cubs, Coke vs. Pepsi, McDonalds vs. Burger King, and how competition inspires reckless exploitation of the planet.

But then think how bloody this tendency can become: America vs. Al Qaeda, Israel vs. Palestine, Tutsi vs. Hutu. Someone should take away the bullets and bombs those primates are playing with.

Social Scientists have had fun studying this tendency among children in summer camps by assigning them to teams, giving them different color T-shirts, etc., and then watching hostility develop between randomly formed groups. Is there any hope we can weed this dynamic out of our species? It’s hard to imagine us without it, but what’s at stake is simply everything: peace with ourselves and with our planet.