[HN Gopher] First evidence of social relationships between chimp...
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       First evidence of social relationships between chimpanzees,
       gorillas: study
        
       Author : hhs
       Score  : 73 points
       Date   : 2022-10-01 15:56 UTC (7 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (source.wustl.edu)
 (TXT) w3m dump (source.wustl.edu)
        
       | ogig wrote:
       | Of course such similar animal cohabiting in the same area will
       | have "social relationships". Some birds have social relationship
       | with mammals, as evidenced in many human to bird relationships.
       | After many years observing corvids seems to me that carrion crows
       | and magpies do have something that could be called social
       | relationship.
       | 
       | Don't want to be dismissive of the merits of this study, but to
       | my eyes this is another "water is wet" paper. We keep insisting
       | in this anthropocentric approach to understanding the world and
       | it leads to plenty of biases.
       | 
       | You are an animal, you have social relationships with other
       | species (your dog, ie). Asume others animals, like you, do the
       | same.
       | 
       | PS: Wrote after some late night wine, excuses.
        
         | zasdffaa wrote:
         | No it's not obvious _at all_. Chimp tribes kill each other,
         | ditto human tribes, and many other species.
         | 
         | Added: to me it's about the last thing I'd have expected.
        
         | Sharlin wrote:
         | As always, science is just as much about confirming null
         | hypotheses as it is about disproving them. Either way can be
         | equally good science. Having scientific evidence that X happens
         | is much more valuable than having a hypothesis that X happens.
         | And obviously evidence almost never conveys just a single bit
         | of information. This paper is about _how_ and _when_ and
         | _where_ and _to what degree_ X was observed to happen, not only
         | whether X did happen.
        
           | ComplexSystems wrote:
           | Sadly, real-world Science is almost never about confirming
           | null hypotheses. There is an enormous amount of research that
           | never gets published for this reason; because the authors had
           | some interesting idea and it just happened to not pan out.
        
       | matheist wrote:
       | Paper full-text available at:
       | https://www.cell.com/iscience/fulltext/S2589-0042(22)01331-1
       | 
       | Choice quotes:
       | 
       | > _gorillas were not observed visiting any of the five Ficus
       | locations on the two days prior to the cofeeding event and
       | visitation to figs was rare on the days after cofeeding. During
       | ape follows, we also observed the gorilla group immediately
       | change their travel direction to head toward chimpanzee
       | vocalizations originating from the canopy of Ficus with ripe
       | figs_
       | 
       | > _Affiliative interactions included play with individuals of
       | both species engaged in chasing, wrestling, play biting, and play
       | hitting._
       | 
       | > _We also observed gesturing between species to initiate social
       | interactions. Intriguingly, chimpanzees exhibited chest-beating
       | which is a behavior characteristic of gorillas._
       | 
       | > _In contrast to predictions of competition between species,
       | nearly all interspecific associations were tolerant or
       | affiliative. Aggression was observed between gorillas and
       | chimpanzees, but did not escalate to killing as reported from
       | Loango, Gabon (Southern et al., 2021)._
        
       | pelasaco wrote:
       | I always remember the "World War Chimp":
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLn9GwHoUy0
        
       | btheshoe wrote:
       | My friend works in that exact lab as an on campus job. He's been
       | telling me about his job watching gorillas, always thought it was
       | really cool.
        
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       (page generated 2022-10-01 23:00 UTC)