Chimpanzee Politics - Frans de de Waal  ## Metadata - Author: **Frans de de Waal** - Full Title: Chimpanzee Politics - Category: #books - Tags: #anthropology #psychology ## Highlights - Chimpanzee females have an average menstrual cycle of thirty-five days, and their genitals are fully distended for about fourteen days. When the females are in this attractive phase of their cycle, the mating frequently per adult male is an average of once in five hours. This means six matings per eight-hour day for the female, because our colony has four males. (Location 2052) - When they groomed each other they cuddled up close, and when they indulged in sexual games they did so away from the group. In this way they avoided being disturbed by the chimpanzee children, who are fascinated by sex, or by Oor. Oor would come rushing up to Amber on two legs, thrashing threateningly with her arms, intent on interrupting her mating session with Nikkie. At other times she would quickly present herself to Nikkie just as Amber was about to do so. Her interference only decreased after she had developed an intimate relationship of her own, with Dandy. These two young couples proved with their fondling, cuddling, and enthusiasm that chimpanzees are capable of playing with sex. This was clearest of all in the so-called "sex dances." (Location 2086) - Among the older apes there are obvious sexual partner preferences, both in our group and among wild chimpanzees. This is one reason for not regarding chimpanzees as totally promiscuous. Another is the regulatory influence of the male hierarchy on sexual activities. (Location 2111) - Female competition occurs almost exclusively in pairbonded species, such as many birds and a few mammals. In those cases, females try to gain or defend a long-term tie with a male. Our own species is a good example: research by David Buss has demonstrated that whereas men get most upset at the thought of their wife or girlfriend having sex with another man, women dislike most the thought that their husband or boyfriend actually loves another woman, regardless of whether or not sex occurred. (Location 2210) - It seems likely that it was due to a "treaty" of nonintervention between Luit and Nikkie, by which they each "under took" to give up supporting Yeroen against the other. Chimpanzees tend toward social reciprocity; hence Nikkie and Luit were each prepared to stop their interventions in Yeroen's favor in return for the other's neutrality. The result of such a wordless process is indistinguishable from that of a transaction. (Location 2293) - The term triadic awareness refers to the capacity to perceive social relationships between others so as to form varied triangular relationships. For example, Luit knows that Yeroen and Nikkie are allies, so he will not provoke conflicts with Yeroen when Nikkie is nearby, but he is much less reluctant to do so when he meets Yeroen alone. (Location 2347) - The basis of hierarchical positions is sex-related. Among males coalitions determine dominance. The male dominance over the females is largely determined by their physical superiority. Among females it is above all personality and age that seem to be the determining factors. (Location 2389) - In our colony the number of male-male conflicts is one every five hours, the number of male-female conflicts is one every thirteen hours, but the number of female-female conflicts is only one every hundred hours (Location 2393) - If the weakest of three players in an experimental game has a chance of scoring points if he joins the strongest or the middle party, he will prefer to ally himself with the latter. (Location 2436) - Among humans, strategy is based on rationality. This should not be confused with consciousness: we can unconsciously arrive at rational solutions, and we also sometimes take steps that we know are irrational. A rational choice is based on an estimate of the consequences. (Location 2447) - In this form the lips are pressed firmly together and the male holds his breath: the chest is puffed up and the lips bulge under the pressure. This is called inflated display. Whereas ventilating display is challenging and serves to make aspirations known, inflated display is self-confident and assertive. (Location 2472) - What is more, chimpanzees are able not only to look and think ahead but they can also look several steps (subgoals) ahead. Proof of this was supplied by an ingenious experiment by Jurgen Dohl. (Location 2507) - Humans are talking primates, but in fact their behavior is not very different from that of chimpanzees. People engage in verbal fights, provocative or impressive word displays, protesting interruptions, conciliatory remarks, and many other patterns of verbal activity that chimpanzees perform without an accompanying text. When humans resort to actions instead of words the resemblance is even greater. Chimpanzees scream and shout, bang doors, throw objects, call for help, and afterward they may make up by a friendly touch or embrace. We humans also display all these patterns, usually without taking a conscious decision to do so, and maybe our motives are not so very different from those of chimpanzees. (Location 2536) - "The selfishness of social animals is typically tempered by what, for want of a better term, I would call sympathy. By sympathy I mean a tendency on the part of one social partner to identify himself with the other and so to make the other's goals to some extent his own." (Location 2544) - "The four of us then experimented by pretending to attack one another. In each case Congo defended the one he knew best. The intriguing thing about his loyalty rating was that it made no difference to him which of two people was the attacker and which the attacked." Congo's interventions followed his sympathies. (Location 2550) - The conclusion is that collaboration is not always based on sympathy, especially not during status competition among adult males. Females and children, on the other hand, usually show sympathy-biased interventions: as a group they score about 75 percent. They largely intervene in conflicts to help relatives and good friends, that is, they react to events in the group rather than use intervention as a means to achieve dominance. The contrast between the sexes cannot be denied. Stated in the simplest terms, the one is protective and personally committed, the other is strategic and status oriented. (Location 2571) - Female chimpanzees tend to avoid competition. (Location 2596) - They also have an interest in creating a safe environment to raise their offspring, which would explain their concilatory role in a situation, such as the Arnhem Zoo, in which they are forced to live together with adult males. (Location 2597) - For males, on the other hand, stability is only a good thing if they are at the top. (Location 2599) - Tags: #anthropology #sex - Males depend on one another in the wild; cooperation is a matter of life and death during territorial encounters with neighbors. (Location 2601) - After 36o such games they concluded that men take more initiatives with respect to forming alliances, especially if there is something to be gained by doing so, whereas women find the atmosphere in which the game is played more important. (Location 2606) - Women support weakly positioned players and join forces against male competitiveness. (Location 2607) - men are out to win and concerned with strategic considerations, whereas women are more interested in interpersonal contacts and predominantly form coalitions with the people they like. (Location 2610) - It has been suggested that food sharing was a strong stimulus in furthering the evolution of our tendency to reciprocal relations. Would it not be more logical to assume that social reciprocity existed earlier and that tangible exchanges such as food sharing stem from this phenomenon? (Location 2678) - There are indications of reciprocity in the nonmaterial behavior of chimpanzees. This is seen, for instance, in their coalitions (A supports B, and vice versa), nonintervention alliances (A remains neutral if B does the same), sexual bargaining (A tolerates B mating after B has groomed A) and reconciliation blackmail (A refuses to have contact with B unless B "greets" A). (Location 2680) - Negative behavior hardly enters into the theories about reciprocity that anthropologists and sociobiologists have developed. The titles of famous publications on the subject are sufficient proof. In 1902 Peter Kropotkin wrote Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution, in 1924 Marcel Mauss wrote The Gift, and in 1971 Robert Trivers wrote "The Evolution of Reciprocal Altruism." (Location 2689) - In time, the situation became even stranger. Nikkie began kissing Mama before or even during his display against Yeroen. This developed gradually from their reconciliations, until it took place without any preceding conflict. It could be seen as a mark of Mama's neutrality. Nikkie and Mama were showing positive reciprocity. (Location 2718) - chimpanzee group life is like a market in power, sex, affection, support, intolerance, and hostility. The two basic rules are "one good turn deserves another" and "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth."15 (Location 2725) - When Aristotle referred to man as a political animal he could not know just how near the mark he was. (Location 2770) - Politicians, for example, are vociferous about their ideals and promises but are careful not to disclose personal aspirations for power. This is not meant to be a reproach, because after all everyone plays the same game. (Location 2779) - I would go further and say that we are largely unaware that we are playing a game and hide our motives not only from others but also underestimate the immense effect they have on our own behavior. (Location 2780) - Tags: #game - All parties search for social significance and continue to do so until a temporary balance is achieved. This balance determines the new hierarchical positions. (Location 2790)