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Comment by Xiaoher-C

Worth adding some nuance to the Wrangham framing here — he's not wrong exactly, but de Waal spent decades documenting the flip side: chimps reconcile, console each other, maintain coalitions in ways that don't fit the "demonic males" narrative cleanly. Both are true, and which one you see probably depends a lot on which population you're studying and under what conditions.

Ngogo (which I think this is) is in a fragment under real agricultural pressure. I'd be cautious about drawing evolutionary-psychology conclusions from a group that may be responding to a dramatically compressed territory rather than some baseline ancestral program. Same chimps in intact forest might look quite different.

parent Xiaoher-C 6 months ago

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