Death of bullies promotes baboon peace

Chicago Tribune (subscription)
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0404130218apr13,1,1593504.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed
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Baboons retool culture after bullies die out
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0413baboon13.html (free)

Synopsis: a long term study revealed that a community of bullying baboons changed into a more nuturing society after all the "biggest, nastiest and most despotic males" died from Tuberculosis. Today, it's still a much more peaceful and loving community, twenty years later.

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Among a troop of savanna baboons in Kenya, a terrible outbreak of tuberculosis 20 years ago selectively killed off the biggest, nastiest and most despotic males, setting the stage for a social and behavioral transformation unlike any seen in this notoriously truculent primate.

The victims were all dominant adult males that had been strong and snarly enough to fight with a neighboring baboon troop over the spoils at a tourist-lodge dump and were exposed there to meat tainted with bovine tuberculosis, which soon killed them. Left behind in the Forest Troop were the 50 percent of males that had been too subordinate to try dump brawling as well as the females and their young.

With that change in demographics came a cultural swing toward pacifism, a relaxing of the usually parlous baboon hierarchy and a willingness to use affection and mutual grooming rather than threats, swipes and bites to foster a patriotic spirit.

Remarkably, the Forest Troop has maintained its genial style over two decades, even though the male survivors of the epidemic have since died or disappeared and been replaced by males from the outside. (As is the case for most primates, baboon females spend their lives in their natal home, while the males leave at puberty.)

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originally NYT-Stanford Researchers -the journal PloS Biology (online at www.plosbiology.org)

If we could get rid of our bullies, the same peace would result.

of what liberals know in their hearts.

that the bully baboons were killed off as a result of their own behavior--the brawling at the dump. There was no revolution or continued violence by betas challenging the alpha males.

I LOVE this article :thumbsup:!!! It's something I've known for a LONG time is true.

I wrote a post a couple of weeks ago, and it says a little something that relates to this article, so I'm going to quote it here:

"This country is in a lot of trouble, and there are some of us die-hard progressives left in the world who can see it for what it is. Clinton did for the repukes what they didn't have enough "cool" to do for themselves. Clinton was just the master of foreplay, where the repukes don't even pretend to bother. But either way, in the end (no pun intended) it's THE PEOPLE who have been screwed.

What needs to happen, is that there needs to be a new paradigm in government -- governments across the globe. While some humans have evolved to the place that we're ready to implement sanity and fairness across the board, there are still too many who aren't enlightened enough to see that a new world IS possible, where there's room and mutual support for everyone. Where everyone wins. Where people can be educated in masse about how to achieve whatever lifestyle they desire, and where they pay their taxes so that governments enable that to happen. And strangely enough to Americans, NOT EVERYONE in the world thinks that being wealthy and having lots of "stuff" is the ideal lifestyle.

The whole military thing is the first paradigm that needs to change. Countries need enough "guns" to protect their borders and streets against psychopaths. But all this "superpower" shit is NOT for THE PEOPLE....it's for the FEW who have a hard-on for blood. Those people need to be isolated and contained in every society, as the ones who are a threat to the peace of the many. That SHOULD be the government's military job, and the ONLY government military job.

If each country could contain their own psycopaths, this world would find more energy to expend on creating things that make the world a better place."

:mad: It's the bully baboons that have to go! :grr:

:kick::kick:

Bullies...every damn one of 'em.

:kick::kick:

the people who hire the mercenaries. It starts at the top, not the bottom.

must go and our world will be safer!

It'll be interesting to see what happens long term.

Gotta give it a little kickity-kick here...

:kick::kick::kick::kick:

It was scary. I was a half mile away, but the ferocity of the fighting made me wish I was a mile away.

The funny part was, while the top males were fighting, the underlings were porking the harem.

I visited a state farm fair and watched these huge oxen with deadly looking horns calmly pulling a plow. I asked their handler if they were a different species from regular old nasty bulls, and he said: "Nope. They've just been neutered. Same species, only now they're cooperative."

That, my friends, is the secret to world peace.