I think that, at least, by the time that we were all in middle school, we have known that us humans evolved from apes and/or some ape-like being from a long time ago. We obviously didn’t know as much as we know now, but we knew something of this general idea at a young age. So that portion of this week’s lessons was the least surprising to learn about because I already had some basic knowledge on that point. I don’t think that I was extremely surprised by the things that we learned about this week, but more so intrigued and appreciative about this week’s lesson dove deeper into the subject, allowing me to take in additional knowledge that I haven’t learned about before.

I think that reading about the behaviors of chimpanzees and spider monkeys in “What Is War Good for? Ask a Chimpanzee.” by Erin Wayman was one of the more interesting reads for me. As I was going through the article, I just kept think that a lot of the aggressive behaviors and aspects of the social life characteristics that Wayman discussed are easily comparable to the way that humans act today. When Wayman started to explain the chimpanzee attacks and how it were the male chimpanzees that attacked their neighbors in an attempt to weaken then, I immediately thought about our wars and how, historically, it has been mostly men that go to fight in wars in attempt to overtake or weaken those that our countries are at war with. Another human example popped into my head when Wayman talked about how the societies of the spider monkey, chimpanzee, and  humans are examples of fission-fusion systems. When Wayman mentioned how females go off to find new communities once they are of age and males generally stay where they were born, I thought about the times of kings and queens when a princess would have been betrothed to a prince and would go live in his family home ; and even now, how most of the time it is women who get married and move in to their husband’s home or just out of their family home.

Learning about the hierarchy was  also interesting because I never knew that there was a hierarchy in place that included animals and humans. I did know that we were considered to be mammals, but I didn’t realize how many characteristics we really share with other mammals. For  example, I knew that most mammals are warm blooded and that humans were also warm blooded, but I never thought about it hard enough to make the connection between humans and mammals.

I think that there is lot that we can learn about ourselves by studying non-human primates, as we have already been doing. I’m sure that there is a lot more to be discovered about how humans will compare to non-human primates and how the things or behaviors we do now are very similar or derive from the behaviors of our non-human ancestors.