Has anyone seen this? Primate Social Behavior on PBS . . .

[patrice]

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature

PBS air that last night. It has very interesting footage of male chimpanzees killing, first a small monkey of another primate sub-class, and then later, as a gang of about 15, one of their own. It was the scientist's, who videoed these chimps in their natural habitat, expert opinion that the murders were Social Behaviors, not for defense, nor for food, though the chimp that killed the little Capuchin monkey ate it in front of the others. There was also video of interaction with Native guides with sharpened teeth. They said they sharpened them only because it is a very very old tribal custom.

On the brighter side there was also video of primate tool-use that was not inborn, but taught socially; the various tools, related to various sub-species, were for the purpose of acquiring food.

[Der Blaue Engel]

1. Is there an inference to be made to the Chimp in Chief? n/t

[patrice]

2. The biological factors are more or less Universal.

In a normal distribution, there would be some persons almost completely dominated by these impulses, and some almost completely free of them, and then most people would be some combination, or range of effects, from 50:50 to every other permutation of the relevant factors, manifested in all kinds of behavioral tendencies.