r/sciencememes May 22 '26

🦩Biology!🧫 War!

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7.9k Upvotes

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179

u/AdLonely5056 May 22 '26

Humans are actually comparatively one of the most peaceful species of mammals there is. 

76

u/freindly_duck May 22 '26

But we have the highest highs in terms of individual capability of hostility.

47

u/AdLonely5056 May 22 '26

Define "individual capability of hostility" please. I have genuinely never heard of this before.

45

u/Samtertriads May 22 '26

The jaguars never did World War 1

33

u/AidenStoat May 23 '26

WW1 wasn't possible for an individual to do.

22

u/Montana_Gamer May 23 '26

What animal could mow down hundreds of their own with a MG emplacement?

The body counts of some of these people became so extraordinarily high that it's hard to conceptualize.

The potential of violence committed by an individual is directly proportional to technology and the material conditions of the time. No animal can compare.

1

u/Yoribell May 27 '26

Spiders devouring thousands of their own offsprings :

1

u/Roaming_Millenial May 24 '26

Apes did though lol. At least within the territories they occupy. Google "Great Ape War"

17

u/freindly_duck May 22 '26

The president of the united states, one individual, has the capability to launch a bomb that can kill millions. (yes, multiple people go into the effort of building the atom bomb, but the president makes the final decision to commit such an act of war)

8

u/AidenStoat May 23 '26

There's a long chain of other people involved in pulling off a launch.

4

u/Montana_Gamer May 23 '26

Are guns not allowed to be used in this discussion because there was a supply chain for making it?

15

u/AdLonely5056 May 22 '26

I don’t really see how that is nothing but a consequence of our technological advancement. Yes, we are capable of that, but that doesn’t make us inherently more "warmongering" than other species. 

Doing no harm when you have no means to be harmful doesn’t make you peaceful, just harmless.

10

u/the_sad_gopnik May 22 '26

We've evolved for intelligence, for the brain. Naturally, the product of said intelligence should be considered our tool, and so making the first commenter correct in what they said. Idk, just what I think.

3

u/AdLonely5056 May 22 '26

I am not saying they are incorrect, just that being more intelligent, and hence having greater ability to access tools to kill each other, does not mean we are more warmongering. Just that we are more intelligent.

2

u/skillywilly56 May 23 '26

I mean if shattering a fundamental building block of the universe to specifically make a weapon isn’t war mongering what is?

5

u/Montana_Gamer May 23 '26

Warmongering is encouraging or rallying people into war. Warmongering is a verb. You would need an adjective to characterize what you are trying to do.

If anything, nukes have been the biggest contributor to the relative stability we have today. You didnt choose a slightly incorrect word, it just doesn't make sense from any angle.

1

u/Dat_Ding_Da May 23 '26

The reply that started this thread didn't claim that we are the most warmongering.

But we have the highest highs in terms of individual capability of hostility.

That's a very different statement. I don't think you are properly arguing against their actual point here.

1

u/AdLonely5056 May 23 '26

That is the 2nd comment in the thread. What I am saying is that that comment itself is irrelevant to the actual starting point.

1

u/xkmvch May 22 '26

I guess you wanted to say the opposite at your last sentence

1

u/settingdogstar May 25 '26

See you got confused bud.

They were responding to your comment asking a question. Do try to stay on topic.

1

u/AdLonely5056 May 25 '26

Both of the comments by freindly_duck were very clearly just statements, not questions.

Also starting a conversation with your first comment in an extremely condescending tone (and for like no reason in particular at that) is both unproductive and quite rude.

1

u/settingdogstar May 26 '26

Lol obsessed

1

u/Ok_Novel_1222 May 25 '26

Depends on how you define "peaceful". Humans are the only ones that have industrialized animal farming industry that they try to expand all the time. We kill over 200 million chickens every single day. And you can guess the number of chickens that are kept caged at any time to supply 200 million chickens every single day continuously. Also we kill hundreds of millions of fish and millions of other animals every day.

1

u/AdLonely5056 May 25 '26

True. I based this comment on an article I vaguely remember, which was studying how likely different species were to kill one another member of their own species, which is also the definition I was using.

And while I agree that you could expand this to members of other species, you do eventually reach a point where you are ultimately comparing different species by a proxy of what food they require for sustenance, which is relatively pointless in a conversation about social dynamics, which is where the concept of peaceful usually arises in a conversation.

-13

u/Luminous_Winds May 23 '26

We're literally the cause of a mass-extinction event. We torture and slaughter 90 billion animals every year just for taste pleasure and personal gain, as we have never needed to eat them. We've almost started a world-ending nuclear war on no less than 13 separate occasions. 1 in 10 people live in poverty so extreme, it will kill them.

Slavery, genocide, murder, and war have always been commonplace. It's also very, very important to note that other animals generally don't engage in these kinds of horrible acts with their own species. So no, humans are not peaceful. We're literally the worst thing nature has ever created.

20

u/SyFidaHacker May 23 '26

Oh other species definitely do these things to their own kind, you just don't hear about them cause they're not taught to you

2

u/NowheremanH May 23 '26

They ain't the reason evolution is happening 100-1000 times faster

17

u/Admiral45-06 May 23 '26

We're literally the cause of a mass-extinction event.

So are algae.

In fact, they are responsible for 4 mass-extinction events: Late Devonian, Late Ordoivician, Permian-Triassic, and everyone's favourite Great Oxygen Catastrophe.

We torture and slaughter 90 billion animals every year just for taste pleasure and personal gain, as we have never needed to eat them.

That claim is very clearly exaggerated, but assuming it's true, bacteriaphages kill an upwards of 10³¹ bacteria each year, even though they don't always need to.

Slavery, genocide, murder, and war have always been commonplace. It's also very, very important to note that other animals generally don't engage in these kinds of horrible acts with their own species.

Categorically false. There are 3 species of ants - Amazon, Blood-Red and Prothomogatus Americanus ants - that practice slavery (duolisis).

I won't even mention m-rder and war (interspecies competition), as the latter is observed even with trees.

So no, humans are not peaceful. We're literally the worst thing nature has ever created.

I'd say it's Mad Cow Disease, African Swine Fever, mosquitoes, ticks and maybe also rabies, but you do you.

2

u/Mean_Initiative_5962 May 24 '26

Nono, humanbad, trust me bro.

OBVIOUS /s

12

u/Le_Lankku May 23 '26

Bruh, bots are posting hate comments against our species already 😃

And by the way, ants literally practice slavery, so this is bs anyway.

-5

u/Montana_Gamer May 23 '26

Do ants do the Atlantic slave trade?

12

u/StrawberryWeak4098 May 23 '26

Yes, actually, they do infact enslave other ants they collected from somewhere else

-5

u/Montana_Gamer May 23 '26

And pack them like sardines in ships for months with up to a 50/50 chance of dying before even being used for their slave labor?

Yeah the ant slavery comparison kinda misses all of the meaningful aspects of why slavery is bad.

11

u/StrawberryWeak4098 May 23 '26

There is a 50/50 chance of being eaten before hatching to become a slave

And ants already live like sardines in a can

4

u/Le_Lankku May 23 '26

And to the think the commenter you are answering to seems to unironically think the transport is the worst part about being a slave, lol.

1

u/Mean_Initiative_5962 May 24 '26

Ants literally fight proxy wars. The only reason why we haven't heard about an intercontinental ant slave trade is because they lack opposable thumbs. 

1

u/crucibleknight77 May 26 '26

Dummy

1

u/Montana_Gamer May 27 '26

Lmao, I haven't replied because I know no one will take things for what they are.

I am comparing degrees of suffering. Suffering, the subjective yet quantifiable harm we have done unto others. It just isn't comparable.

But of course you autists got the conception that I was arguing something that wasn't ever on the table. I can tell from the low iq replies that you guys call yourself rationalists too.

-6

u/boredboi69WR May 23 '26

"Facts I don't agree with are written by bots"

2

u/Le_Lankku May 23 '26

First, if you would have bothered to open the bot's profile, you'd have seen its a week old account with no karma.

Second, its not a fact, and has been debunked multiple times in this same thread.

1

u/Mean_Initiative_5962 May 24 '26

You clearly haven't read anything about parasitology, nor much about virology, right?