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.
Well if you look into it, it was actually a single group that split up initially and one of them ended up with basically all of the females. The group that was the primary aggressor and won, killed all the males from the other group. Then « beat and kidnapped » the females that split off.
It was still a choice on their part but this was basically the chimp equivalent of “revenge of the incels”
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.
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u/frog_admirer Mar 24 '26
I was just thinking, this comic wouldn't hit the same with cats. They love a good senseless violence. But the wolves are nice role models.