Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: SF Chinese (ID:kexuejiaodian), author: SF

Scientists have recently discovered that chimpanzees living in C ô te d'Ivoire use a military tactic common in human warfare to gather intelligence about hostile groups.

Chimpanzees are close relatives of human beings. they not only have high intelligence, but also have complex social structures. Chimpanzees usually live in groups of dozens of square kilometers. The territorial boundaries of chimpanzee groups are not fixed, and they need to constantly patrol the territorial boundaries to prevent the invasion of other groups. Such patrols sometimes escalate to "raids", reaching deep into the territory of neighboring groups.

Conflicts between chimpanzee groups can be very violent and even fatal. Chimpanzees organize orderly attacks, ambush, chase, beat, and sometimes even kill hostile members. Chimpanzee violence may be affected by a variety of factors, such as food richness, sex ratio, group size and balance of power.

Chimpanzees use Highland Reconnaissance to better understand conflicts between chimpanzee groups, a team of scientists observed and followed two adjacent groups of chimpanzees living in Tay National Park in C ô te d'Ivoire for a long time. They and their local assistants followed chimpanzees for 8 to 12 hours a day from 2013 to 2016 and collected GPS and behavioral data. They found that chimpanzees use high ground to spy on each other, just like on a military reconnaissance mission.

Specifically, scientists have found that chimpanzees are more likely to climb hills when they reach the boundaries of their territory. On these hills, chimpanzees rest quietly instead of following activities that interfere with their hearing.

Scientists have also found that when each other is far away, chimpanzees are more likely to enter disputed territory from the highlands, suggesting that they use information from the highlands to avoid conflict. However, chimpanzees may also use the information to find opportunities to attack each other.

When members of two chimpanzee groups meet, the difference in number is an important factor in determining whether or not to escalate into violent conflict. Chimpanzees seem to be able to measure the costs and benefits of conflict, and information from the highlands can help them do so.

Chimpanzees have metacognitive ability to use highlands to assess the current situation, which is one of the oldest military tactics of human beings. The study shows that chimpanzees also use this tactic, and this is the first time scientists have documented that non-human animals can do so. Scientists believe that this tactic may be favored by natural selection, helping chimpanzees to expand their territory and gain access to resources.

In addition, the study shows that chimpanzees can not only pay attention to dangers in the environment, but also actively look for useful information to guide their actions. This suggests that chimpanzees have the ability to metacognition, that is, the ability to reflect on what they know and get more information based on what they don't know.

Perhaps the group conflicts of our human ancestors are similar to those of chimpanzees. In short, this study provides a new perspective for us to understand the social and cognitive abilities of chimpanzees, as well as new clues for us to explore human evolution.

References:

Https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3002350

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