The great ape alpha is a threatening individual. Not only does he threaten his own groups members to get them to defer to him, this master of threat will turn his imposing nature outside the group and protect it from dangers in the external world.(3) What are these external threats? Gorilla males will protect their harem and children not only from predators, but from other males.(4) Male gorillas practice infanticide on the offspring of other males. Foreign males are also a threat to chimpanzee communities. Like the gorilla, the aggressive chimpanzee will take the lead in protecting the group from predators. He will also, like the gorilla, keep his eye out for lurking ‘foreign’ males.
A logical consequence of having an in-group is the existence of out-group others. By creating an ‘us’ a not-us is generated in consequence. The boundary of a group separates inside from out. And outsiders can be dangerous: they can usurp resources; they can upset group stability. So chimpanzees are wary of them. As Barbara king has noted in her book on the African great apes -
“Community membership is apparently meaningful to the chimpanzees, because boundaries are patrolled. Patrollers, typically males, silently walk the perimeter of their communities, seeking the presence of noncommunity individuals. Although some members may switch communities at certain times in their lives, intercommunity interaction, when it occurs, tends toward the aggressive, and sometimes even the lethal.” (5)
In fact, in the social psychology of chimpanzees we can discern the origins of human xenophobia and perhaps even genocidal behavior. For decades our kind has been quite naïve about the psychological and social complexity of other primates. As an illustration, consider this anecdote:
“In West Africa the fist hint of intercommunity violence came in 1977, within Senegals’s Niokola-Koba National Park, when conservationist Stella Brewer brought a group of ex-captive chimps into the forest with hopes of reintroducing them to a wild existence. But repeated attacks by native chimpanzees, including a terrifying nighttime raid of the camp by a gang of four adults, finally forced Brewer to shut her experiment down.” (6)
Other episodes of chimp ‘gang violence’ have also surfaced. In the Mahale Mountains National Park, it was documented that in wild groups of chimpanzees, one group, the ‘K-group’ seems to have been exterminated by another group, the ‘M.” (7) Or at least the males were killed; the females were likely incorporated into the winning group. In other words, inter-group hostility is not a strictly human thing.
This verse from Deuteronomy (21:10-11) readily comes to mind:
When you go to war against your enemies and the LORD your God delivers them into your hands and you take captives, if you notice among the captives a beautiful woman and are attracted to her, you may take her as your wife.
Likewise, the inclination to view us as good (safe) and them as bad (threatening), extends farther than the human species. This us-them propensity has even been extended to the supernatural realm.
The nations will hear and tremble; anguish will grip the people of Philistia. The chiefs of Edom will be terrified, the leaders of Moab will be seized with trembling, the people of Canaan will melt away; terror and dread will fall upon them. By the power of your arm they will be as still as a stone—until your people pass by, O LORD, until the people you bought pass by. (Exodus 15:15-16)
It may be true that the Old Testament alpha more closely resembles a male chimpanzee in its temperament. Yet that is likely due to the similar social environments of the chimpanzee and of the semi-nomadic bands of early Israelites living among bands of foreigners. Potentially hostile foreigners.
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(3) Bourne, H., The Ape People, Putnam, New York, 1971.
(4) Jolly, A. Lucy’s Legacy, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1999, p.166
(5) King, Barabara. The Dynamic Dance: Nonvocal Communication in African Great Apes, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2004, p.25
(6) Wrangham, R. & Peterson, D. Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence, Houghton Mifflin, NY, 1996, p.20
(7) de Waal, F. B. M., (ed.), Tree of Origin: What Primate Behavior Can Tell Us About HumanSocial Evolution, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2001, p. 17
