How it starts

[Hosakawa Tito]

Chimps hunt with spears

The word from astonished researchers in the West African savannah is that chimpanzees there have been spotted painstakingly making spears and then using them to stab small mammals to death. Then the chimps announced a plan to develop a nuclear program, triggering White House threats and a news-leak campaign against doubters and...

Oh, wait, I made that last sentence up. But it is true that this news once again shows the value of old-fashioned spy work over satellite surveillance. The researchers only saw the spearmaking after spending several years gaining the chimpanzees' trust (insert your own joke about politicians and the media here). Then they blabbed to the press. There's a moral in here somewhere, but you'd need a spear to find it.

[Antagonist]

I say good luck to them. Humanity has been complacent about its dominant species status for far too long now, a little competition might be just what we need to keep us on our toes.

Antagonist

[Csargo]

Thread from the Monastery.

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showt...50#post1440850

Interesting to say the least. Soon chimps will take over the world with there pointy sticks.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Surprising, but hardly shocking. We've seen them use tools before. Now we know they make tools. So now they need language and then they can get started taking over.

[Grey_Fox]

How dare these vile creatures create such tools that can only be used for subjugation, torture and war. I demand that the world take action and disarm the little savages.

[Marshal Murat]

Those devilish chimps!
I say we make all of them disarm, then give 5 of them spears, and let the rest fend for themselves. When they make spears to defend themselves, we criticize them for making spears and take them away.

Maybe seal it in paper?
Non-Proliferation-Treaty amongst Chimps.

When the 5 chimps are all conquerors, we will wonder what we did wrong.

[ShadeHonestus]

What separates chimps from humans in the USA is our right to wield firearms and the common design of many to favor opposable thumbs.

[sapi]

What separates chimps from humans in the USA is our right to wield firearms and the common design of many to favor opposable thumbs.

What separates chimps from humans in the USA is their intelligence - take that however you want

[Navaros]

What this shows is the arrogance of man. Man is so arrogant that he forms fabricated ideas ideas in his own mind and thinks that because of his alleged "superior intellect regarding everything in the Universe" that all of his fabricated ideas are equal to the truth.

Then we he finds out they are not, it is described as "miraculous" because he was wrong.

Really, it's not miraculous. It's simply the truth coming out from time to time and showing that man's intellect is not anywhere so accurate as he pompously believes it to be.

[Marshal Murat]

It's still better than a horses though.

We can think abstractly, and when a chimp can evolve the ability to think abstractly, it's 'miraculous' because we did that 3000+ years ago, and now they are getting up to our level 3000+ years ago.
If fish started walking on land, that would be miraculous because it shows an animal evolving.

If anything, this means that chimps are proving evolution is possible.
.................................................................................................... ........

Or you just hate homo sapiens

[ShadeHonestus]

If anything, this means that chimps are proving evolution is possible.

I don't believe this particular case is an example of this. It would be true if something genetically has occurred to give this population of chimps the ability to do this. However, the behavior's origin could be a number of things really.

What this shows is the arrogance of man.

Comparisons of chimps and homo sapiens must remember that these species evolved independantly of each other with the divergence being anywhere from 4-7million years ago. The same thing the lay person states about comparisons of neanderthals and homo sapiens and how "human" is their behavior, neanderthals and humans also evolved independantly with a common ancestor. This has nothing to do with arrogance of man, but the reality of an anthrocentric view of the world. Would the common chimp be as arrogant if his reasoning reached this point and took his species and what his species accepts as "known" as the point of comparison?

[Tuuvi]

I think it is stupid of those scientists to compare what those chimps are doing to humans hunting with spears. It's not like they tracking and stalking their prey like us humans do. What the chimps are doing is the same thing they do with termites only they are using a bigger stick.

[Pannonian]

I think it is stupid of those scientists to compare what those chimps are doing to humans hunting with spears. It's not like they tracking and stalking their prey like us humans do. What the chimps are doing is the same thing they do with termites only they are using a bigger stick.

You think that chimps don't track and stalk when hunting? There was a monastery thread a while back, where I raised the example of a chimp patrol (lead by Frodo) that patrolled its borders in a recognisable column, then took up a vantage point on a ridge to survey the valley below. When they spotted something in "their" territory, they moved off, again in a column, until they got to the tree in question. They then arranged themselves around that tree, and scared the intruding chimp down, which was badly beaten up when it descended. Another nice touch was how the chimp patrol psyched itself up before it set off, much like soldiers before an operation.

One can often see proto-human traits and behaviour in chimps. What's surprising is just how much there is of it.

[Ice]

What this shows is the arrogance of man. Man is so arrogant that he forms fabricated ideas ideas in his own mind and thinks that because of his alleged "superior intellect regarding everything in the Universe" that all of his fabricated ideas are equal to the truth.

Then we he finds out they are not, it is described as "miraculous" because he was wrong.

Really, it's not miraculous. It's simply the truth coming out from time to time and showing that man's intellect is not anywhere so accurate as he pompously believes it to be.

Uh, what?

[Tribesman]

What this shows is the arrogance of man. Man is so arrogant that he forms fabricated ideas ideas in his own mind and thinks that because of his alleged "superior intellect regarding everything in the Universe" that all of his fabricated ideas are equal to the truth.

Navaros is abandoning scripture and becoming a godless heathen .

[InsaneApache]

I, for one, welcome our new Simian overlords.