For this weeks post, i have got the opportunity to not only write about, but research a ton about non human evolution and how the evolution of different species has affected the evolution of humans indirectly and directly.

In my major of human biology, it is fairly obvious that part of my education has been to take several classes that focus on evolution, but maily focusing on human evolution, and occasionally looking at the evolution of different species, but not in the way that we have done this week. For example, the reading that i found to be super interesting was “What is War Good For? Ask a Chimpanzee”. throughout this piece, the elaborated on certain changes that have taken place over time throughout this species and dove into what we as humans can learn from them about aggression and anger and how different people/ species deal with it differently. For example, one aspect that the author chose to focus on was the fission-fusion society aspect, which is where the size and demographic of a social group would change in time and would morph into something new. One example that they pointed out was how females leave the group when they are old enough to mate and then they end up joining another group or how spider monkeys don’t stay together as often because food might be more spread out. But aside from just observing the fission-fusion type societies, you can also learn a lot from watching them. One thing that they learned was that these types of group demographics creates violence among the members. This is because there are a lot of aspects such as male/female, strong/weak members that can clash and not work. for instance, because these groups are close knit and resources are very limited, one group might feel the need to attack another group so that they can get the resources such as food/water or shelter from that weaker group. This can also be applied with two male members wanting to claim territory and in turn create violence. One other aspect of these groups are the bonobos, which are thought of as female-centered groups. The females in these groups are observed to be more willing to mate than other groups, which causes much more of it to go on which in turn is predicted to actually lower the aggressiveness of males.

From these studies, there is a lot to learn and apply towards our own physiology and biology. There are limits to these types of studies though. Obviously, most of the time, they are wild animals and they should be kept in the wild, so learning from non-human primate behavior is not always readily available. But, when it is available, watching the movements and observing groups such as chimpanzees can give us a better understanding as to why and how our culture was formed as a whole, and can even allow us to possibly make prediction as to where it might be going in the future.