This week’s focus on primatology has had the most attention grabbing lessons so far! Since I am majoring in Social Work and have always had an interest in psychology, human behavior is fascinating to me. So showing how human behavior is similar to other primates, drew me in.

In our lecture it is discussed how both humans and non-human primates rely on learned behavior. Growing and maturing takes longer because we have more to figure out and less of it is pre-programmed within us at birth. I find this interesting because you would think that it would be more beneficial to have a shorter maturing period and less stuff to learn. Why would it be advantageous for us to take a year plus to learn to walk when other animals can walk within seconds of being born. I understand that the way we walk is more complicated and requires more balance, but again, why would that way of walking be more advantageous than all fours? It seems to me that it would be more beneficial to know how to do things immediately than to come out of the womb helpless. 

The bonobos are a cool type of primate. The readings showed that they are more peaceful in general and have more friendship-like bonds. They hypothesize that this is due partially to the bonobos being a female run social group. As a feminist, I am a bit biased and do believe that woman are naturally less likely to engage in violent behavior, and more likely to resolve things in a more diplomatic way. The connection to bonobos engaging in sex for more than just reproductive purposes is cool too. Kind of makes me feel that the solution to world peace is woman leaders and a less oppressed view on sex and sexuality in society. On the bright side, it seems for the most part that as a society we are moving this way. Our generation is much less conservative and we have more women in power than ever before. It makes sense that a society with less oppressed people would be happier and more peaceful. If everyone has what they need, there is no reason to fight each other to get it.

I think we can use this information about our similarities so explain our own behavior and use the knowledge to improve on it. We can recognize that some of our social/cultural behavior is innate. We act this way because of our non-human ancestors. The difference is, we have the ability to think critically. We need to use this ability to analyze our behavior deeper so that we can change it. Our biases may just exist because of our animalistic instincts and we can use this knowledge to challenge those biases. The article What Is War Good for? Ask a Chimpanzee mentions at the end that due to humans becoming more intelligent and complex, war has increased. The reasoning behind this is that we have more things to fight over. I find this a bit discouraging, as you would think more intelligence would lead to less fighting. We should be able to work things out more effectively and less violently. I suppose one could make this positive by saying that we fight for basic human rights everywhere whereas before it may not have been a priority that anyone but you and your immediate community get the resources they need. In my negative world view, I think we have gotten more selfish and created even more resources to fight over, money being the biggest culprit.