Looking at the influence on human evolution that non-human primates have provided, it shows a surprising significant amount of information that leads us to be who we are today. I have always known about Darwin’s theory evolution but I have never actually taken a closer look. Watching the film “The New Chimpanzee” from National Geographic, it showed connections between chimpanzee’s and humans that I would have never distinguished. Their gestures, expressions, even the way they socialize and communicate within their own groups. The film provided lots of information on Chimpanzees, and Bonobos and various examples on the way humans have evolved from these mammals and characteristics in which we share with them. The sole fact that we share 97% of the same genes with Chimpanzees just shows biologically how we’re related but this film went deeper and showed us similarities I would have never guessed. Like I said in the beginning, I knew about evolution and theories of evolution but this film showed characteristics and similarities that these Chimpanzees possess that we as humans also have. “The New Chimpanzee” spoke of how traits were passed down from mother to their young, traits such as fishing for safari ants. These Chimpanzees actually chose a tool, and had methods to successfully grab these safari ants for food, and these methods were passed down to their young and throughout their generations. This species was able to find methods and were able to adapt just like humans, or maybe humans learned to adapt from Chimpanzees? Another interesting article from this week was “What Is War Good for? Ask a Chimpanzee”, This article describes Jane Goodall’s experience studying chimpanzee’s. The article goes on to speak about her experience and how closely it relates to humans and the aggression we see in our species. Reading the article it seemed as if I was reading about humans defending their territory in war, which is exactly what the chimpanzee’s did. A documented “warfare” between what were once a single group of chimps that then spread into two groups, one in the north and one in the south. The chimpanzees from the north went and raided the south killing many others and conquering the south’s territory. (Sound familiar??) This was studied and this pattern was observed multiple times, happening all over in different locations but with the same story plot. Anthropologists believe that this sort of behavior is due to the “fission-fusion” societies. Stating that this behavior isn’t just for any reason, they begin these raids and violence to in the end gain something. Such as the chimps who left their community to go kill and raid the south, to obtain land which may gain new resources as well. Studying non-human primates we can better understand our biology, behavior and culture by seeing that these are not random, senseless acts. Studying non-human primates we can see similar behavior that humans present, we can look at different groups of primates and try to understand if there is a hierarchy present, if they have mini societies within a large community. Try and  understand and develop reasons for what causes these violent outbreaks, were the aggressive chimps low on food? We’re they in need of more viable mates to reproduce? Do they need more land for resources? By studying this can relate it to our own biology and see links between us and non-human primates.