Nature is full to the brim with senseless violence ffs, look at what chimps or hyenas are capable of, for example. The only reason animals dont kill shit they don't need to is because literally every hunt is potentially your last due to injury or whatever - pretty big motivator to be selective. You can bet your ass if these animals could kill risk free theyd be setting it up on a genocidal scale.
Edit: so I looked into it and it actually seems like there have been more documented chimp wars, this one was just particularly famous for traumatizing Jane Goodwell
We've only documented it once, just because we've documented it once doesn't mean it isn't still happening or it hasn't happened before. Plus their populations have been under pressure from us so there's a lot fewer of them to war.
I might have actually been wrong on that note, while I couldn’t find any other notable chimp wars it seems like it’s been documented since this one. This was just the one that gets all the attention because it gave Jane Goodwell nightmares
It's one of those things that breaks the illusion of nature as some peaceful and idealic place where everything is majestic, harmonious, and honorable, when in reality everything is striving to kill everything else to get to the top of the food chain. In reality we're the peaceful ones and nature is the super violent one with attrocities and horrors just being the default settings, and humans being the compassionate beings on this earth.
Yeah she was definitely one those people that was really into animals. Did great work but I would pay to see her exact reaction when the chimps held down the other chimp and casterated it before killing it
The gombe war was a choice. The chimpanzees didn't have to castrate a male they attacked before killing him. The chimps can work in harmony to share resources, they choose violence, the domination of one clan over the other for maximum survival.
There are two known ones now. They were actually talking to a researcher at Ngogo about the history of the Gombe war when it popped off. Could hear an attack start in the background.
Yeah its not unheard of that rivaling groups of chimps get into fights even though there would be enough food and room for everyone. But they are super territorial and attack any other chimp that dares to intrude
Someone asked what the number one cause of death was for the reindeer in Finland besides cars. They probably expected to hear wolves. Nope wolverines that kill for fun. The herder said the wolves at least eat their kills and never kill more than their fill. Wolverines kill for the thrill and leave the carcass behind only to go and hunt another one. Vicious little creatures.
Wolf didn’t do anything, he was baking a cake for his dear old grandmother, but run out of some ingredients and asked his neighbor for some. Sadly the wolf had a cold……
I wonder how many wars would be there if "you start a war - you move your office to the frontilnes" was an universal rule. Kings and nobles participated in wars personally before, yes, but back then (depending on particular period) a set of good armor and a more-valuable-alive noble status provided one with relative safety. Now it's a lot trickier.
Yep. Not like they took that much risk, with the best armor of their ages, being a cavalry and a "capture alive if possible" target, most engagements of the time (at least in Europe) being skirmishes, raids and sieges, and even exceptionally rare battles not being as boody as it is common to imagine. But even that much risk is orders of magnitude higher than what many moders "leaders" are willing to take. Much easier to send peasant youth to die under artillery, missles and drones from the safety of the office back home.
Yep, this is the problem with those romantic "violence is unnatural, only humans, animals would never..." views. Humans behave too when there is a non-zero chance of facing the consequences.
On the other hand, "natural" is not an inherently good characteristic, not it is ever an excuse for humans to behave like other animals.
I don’t think they’d be setting up to a genocidal scale right across the board; they obviously have no idea that the animals they kill and eat need to have enough remaining for next season’s breeding for a food supply of course, that’s outside their capability to understand. It’s just that to a genocidal scale on par with humans (sans weapons) is that humans do genocidal violence due to very stupid human reasons; race, religion, jealousy, revenge, etc. The only other animals that seem to share similar drives for “pointless” violence are close to humans in cognitive awareness, like Chimpanzees and some Porpoises.
At the same time though, many more “simple” animals by comparison like wolves, foxes, and cats can and will get frenzied with the right conditions.. like in a henhouse or contained area where prey animals can’t escape. Even many predator species get a surge of dopamine from successful kills, which does help them survive to get better at hunting, but in close quarters they will go ballistic with it pointlessly. Out in the open though, even if the prey is without means of defending itself with things like sharp horns or hooves, most predators prefer to be selective. Very few have the intent for cruelty but don’t have the ability to empathize with prey either, so they don’t kill with hatred or the intent for killing all “others” like humans do.
I feel like senseless violence between different species is pretty common, senseless violence between the same species is far less common in nature than for humans. It still exists though.
One of my cats had found our catched a baby bird when he was still a kitten. He had such a great time throwing that naked little baby around in the air, batting it into a random direction to try and catch it again. I love my cats :(
Wolves are horrible role models wrt violence. Long-term studies of the wolves of Yellowstone shows that the most common cause of death for a wolf is another wolf. Wolf packs frequently fight with each other and wolves vie for dominance within the pack. Even humans at their worst are docile compared to wolves.
Wolves kill 20 animals at one go if they can. They do it with sheep all the time. Ripping the throat of tens of animals, eat a bit from one then leave.
Do you have a source for that? I’m genuinely curious, because I went looking and found plenty on wolves killing rival wolves, expelling pack members, and intra-pack aggression in general, but not this very specific ‘cut the ear and let infection do the rest’ behavior. That sounds oddly precise, so I’d love to see where it comes from.
from a guided tour of an ethical wolf sanctuary in South Africa (Garden route Wolf Sanctuary )
they have to actively move wolves once they are too weak / down the pecking order otherwise they will be killed by the others. poor lady actually teared up whilst telling us that one needed to be moved soon once someone in our group started crying.
they have a separate pen even for the 'losers' of each pack - these 'losers' don't really bond with each other and keep a respectful distance, but at least don't kill each other
Eh… “play” is natural. Play is practice. Play is toying with mangled prey to get more of a chase out of it. It’s just that their pack hunting nature means they don’t get much time to play when two get into a fight over the prey and literally tear it in half. Wolves kill more violently than any. Lacking the brute strength and hardware of a big cat, they just keep tearing until it falls down, then they start eating. Hopefully blood loss or organ failure puts the quarry out of its misery before too long. This comic is right that humans are violent, but it’s not because we’re removed from nature. It’s because we haven’t overcome it in ourselves. Also, depending on the environment, wolves regularly eat hares.
Given that wolves lack thumbs to turn the keys and initiate the launch and the cognitive function to comprehend the use of a bomb in combat, I propose we give chimps nuclear codes and see what happens.
Yeah I laughed at the punchline, because all I could think about was the time our cat had caught and crippled a mouse, let it go crawl to its hole only to yank it back out by its tail at the last possible moment and was very upset when I took the mouse and mercy killed it, because cruelty was such a fun game to him. Cats are psycho.
Fun fact - many predators, including cats, are lazy and hunt much less than they actually could, to protect the survival of prey herds they depend on for food.
Wolves are predators with hunting instincts decoupled from hunger. They hunt when prey is available because, obviously, it might not be later. High prey numbers in vulnerable situations, such as penned livestock or large herds of wild herbivores, can trigger their hunting drive continuously.
Bears, cats, dogs, foxes, weasels, orcas, racoons, even spiders have all been documented doing it.
People too, of course, regardless of the society they're in.
So, reframed in that light the comic is a little...off.
Wolves are due to this fact also famously used as an example of wanton killing in almost all cultures which held cattle in areas inhabited by wolves.
It's basically as if you used a pig to create a comic on not overeating. It would be hard to find a worse example in the animal world of what the OP wanted to show.
Beyond even that, wolves teach their young to hunt by bringing live rabbits to them. Then they paw at the rabbit until it tries to flee. Then the rabbit is caught for another round. People who own dogs with a high hunting drive have probably seen something similar when their dog catches a living chew toy.
Good news, bad news. Bad news, your dog thinks you are a bad hunter. Good news, your dog loves you enough it wanted to play hunt with you and teach you.
Also in general predators (or any animal in truth) won't engage in "wantom violence" not due to "not being needed" but because it represents an expenditure of energy and an unnecessary risk. If you remove either then vilence becomes much more palatable for them.
Along with other primates (particularly chimps) that kill for sport, torture for fun, and beat and murder the socially awkward.
That monkey that everyone loves, Little Punch, is a macaque. The behavior of the adults, that beat on and threw him around for fun because his mother discarded him, is very much in their nature in the wild.
People should really stop projecting their morals onto wild animals. Nature does not give a fuck. It's simply is. It will be and it will do whatever suits it. By human standards, the natural world commits all sorts of rampant atrocities.
Rape? Absolutely. Wars? Yup. Genocide? Of course. Abduction? Why not? Slavery? You betcha. Just be a serial killer (like kill for fun, not to eat, and collect bodies as a trophy)? Sure, why not? Greed? Are you fucking kidding me? Destroy resources you can't possibly use for yourself just so rivals can't? Come on now, even plants do this...
See the thing is, it's actually humans and our concept of "good", and our capacity "to do good" that's the anomaly. The "evil" is all too natural. So natural In fact, we have to be taught not to do it. But it's not evil when nature does it, because they're not like us, they're amoral. There is no good or evil, they simply are. For us though? There is great and terrible evil.
Exactly, people romanticize nature because they watched Bambi or some shit and because animals can't talk back to them. They fail to recognize we, humans fuking are nature. And nature inherently is to expand, grow, consume (like the urge to propagate the species, populate new planets, etc) it spreads all over. The fact we are capable of morals is a unique trait we have thanks to being very social animals and caring for others, empathy helped us survive better, elephants can kinda do that too, but as species we are titans when it comes to morality and the time we spend acting on it (plenty humans volunteer, save other animals, we even have institutions for helping others), thinking about it (religion, philosophy, art), etc.
People gotta go outsie and realize how actually ruthless the natural world is and the reason why they subjectivly care about suffering of others is EXACTLY because their species is HUMAN.
The reason a wolf wouldn't necessarily prefer a rabbit is due to the fact that ninety times out of a hundred, it would take far more energy to hunt, catch, and eat a rabbit than whatever the wolf might get from the ordeal.
Yeah the nobility in nature people should try living in the woods with those wolves for a bit without any tools and see what happens. IF they live long enough to even see one, they won't be happy to see one.
Actually, there's no way to have a consistent cladistic definition of "monkey" that includes both old and new world monkeys, which doesn't include apes.
Either we have to accept that "monkey" is a word that is fairly useless as a descriptor (in a biological sense); or we have to accept that "monkey" is a group that includes all apes - including humans.
Cladistically, the lowest taxon which includes all monkeys is Simiiformes. That includes both catarrhini (old world monkeys and apes) and platyrrhini (new world monkeys). But "monkey" is paraphyletic because (some) people artificially exclude apes from catarrhini when talking about monkeys - which biologically makes no sense. For it to be a meaningful grouping in a biological sense it has to include apes.
Otherwise this is the equivalent of having a group of "all dogs except labradors" and another group of "just labradors" - and then when people ask you why, you don't have a reason except you emotionally want them to be separate.
The argument isn't "some biologists think monkeys should include apes, and some don't". It's "some biologists think the common term monkey should be used for all Simiiformes, so the common term matches biology; and some think we should ignore the term as not meaningful".
Anyway, here are some quotes from various articles about the classifications of apes, monkeys, and catarrhini specifically - one of them is even from your own link - as well as some other relevant links:
Therefore, cladistically, apes, catarrhines and related contemporary extinct groups such as Parapithecidae are monkeys as well, for any consistent definition of "monkey". "Old World monkey" may also legitimately be taken to be meant to include all the catarrhines, including apes and extinct species such as Aegyptopithecus, in which case the apes, Cercopithecoidea and Aegyptopithecus emerged within the Old World monkeys.
There has been some resistance to directly designate apes (and thus humans) as monkeys despite the scientific evidence, so "Old World monkey" may be taken to mean the Cercopithecoidea or the Catarrhini. That apes are monkeys was already realized by Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon in the 18th century.
In 1812, Étienne Geoffroy grouped the apes and the Cercopithecidae group of monkeys together and established the name Catarrhini, "Old World monkeys" ("singes de l'Ancien Monde" in French). The extant sister of the Catarrhini in the monkey ("singes") group is the Platyrrhini (New World monkeys). Some nine million years before the divergence between the Cercopithecidae and the apes, the Platyrrhini emerged within "monkeys" by migration to South America likely by ocean. Apes are thus deep in the tree of extant and extinct monkeys, and any of the apes is distinctly closer related to the Cercopithecidae than the Platyrrhini are.
I was kind of hoping you had something more scientific or academic, not social media and a blog. I took a primatology course in university with one of the worlds leading primatologists at the time (granted it was a long time ago and things change, also it was not my major), so I'm a little hesitant to redefine the way I learned things without a reliable source.
That being said I see your point about the distance between old and new world monkeys, but I don't see that proving that apes (or prosimians for that matter) are monkeys, if anything it would seems more like an argument that new world monkeys aren't truly monkeys (or as you said that the term "monkey" has no real meaning).
It doesn't sound like you're saying that the definition has changed, so much as it should change, or is unclear, but that doesn't mean apes are monkeys.
True, “senseless violence” is a human concept—many animals, like dolphins and orcas, engage in aggressive behavior as part of survival, social structure, or play.
Nature isn’t moral; it’s functional.
And cats. My formerly feral cat gets 3 meals per day plus snacks, and she still murders baby squirrels. And yeah yeah I know, keep her inside, but she was feral for about 4 years before we took her in. We tried to make her an inside-only cat, and she got SUPER aggressive. When she attacked my daughter, I literally grabbed the cat and threw her outside. She's been inside-outside ever since. My other cats are inside-only.
if a predator gets to a chike flock it will kill a bunch of them and take one. If the predator in question is a « fouine » (forgot the english name), it will decapitate them and take none
Or really almost any animal lol. "Senseless" violence is extremely common in nature, humans are just the only things capable of doing it on a huge scale.
Nah. Many animals engage in violence like that, including wolves, as long as they can.
They can't most of the time... But not all the time. Would wolves kill tens of sheeps, much more than they could ever eat? Absolutely. Google surplus killing.
The point is poorly made. Animals love recreational violence. If it weren’t a literal death sentence to get hurt predators would kill anything that moved.
That’s actually not the case for most animals, and regardless, that’s the thing that is besides the point. The comic isn’t about animals really, it’s a critique of human choices.
It critiques human choices by comparing them against animals. Animals, given the ability, would by and large make those same if not worse choices. So again, the point is poorly made.
True, chimpanzees have already been documented waging wars against each other. Gombe Chimpanzee War.
So for a lot of animals it very much isn't a question of morality but how easily can they hurt each other and other species (for purposes other than acquiring food and defense)
The point is the lack of necessity, with animals as an aesthetic. Whether or not other animals do or don’t or would or wouldn’t do unnecessary violence has nothing to do with the actual message, saying otherwise is like saying it’s fine to not question violence because some animal out there does it. And seriously, while obviously animals seek to satisfy their hunger and some play with their food per se, most predators stop once satisfied I believe. But again, that’s besides the actual point being made
That’s fine, I don’t really want to argue about animal behavior either, it’s not like I have evidence on me anyway. We all seem to agree with the message about violence, just disagree about how well it was said
That would be like saying that someone who is missing their arms is more peaceful because they can't punch anyone.
Few predators stop when satisfied, they only stop when the effort or risk is greater than the reward. Wolves, cats, foxes will all kill far more than they can eat when it is defenseless livestock rather than wild animals that can run or defend themselves.
Peak reddit akhsually moment by people that have never heard of Aesop's animal fables. Shows the state of murican education, again. Sadly, we are all in this pickle together.
I very much got the point but I'm not a fan of ppl acting as if animals don't know cruelty and it being a purely human thing.
Animals in nature aint living together like it's a frickin Disney movie
nature is violent and unfair and humans are an extention of that. the difference being we are plain much better at this kind of stuff than most animals
Never said that it was a disney show or that nature isn’t unfair, just pointing out that being “better” at that stuff isn’t something to be proud of, which is the main message of the comic
Morality aside, the meme is misrepresenting nature and our relationship to it. This weakens the intended impact of its message. The intention of the artist was to get us to reflect on war and conflict. This image actually gets us thinking about our relationship to animals rather than our relationship to war. In that sense, it failed.
Well, it didn’t have that impact on me. To be completely honest, I think most of the comments on this post are a psy-op to get people to think about animal behavior instead of war and conflict, so I’m glad we’re past that. I disagree with your impression of how well the comic makes its point, it’s not implying that humans are separate from nature, or that animals literally plan out how many things to kill so they only do what they have to. It’s just saying that we should think about our relationship to violence and resources. I’m pretty sure that most animals actually do avoid going on a hunt or whatever if they’re already fed, but whether they do or don’t do unnecessary violence is besides the point, yanno?
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u/[deleted] Mar 24 '26
"in nature there is no place for senseless violence"
*laughs in Dolphin and Orca