How This River Made Chimps Violent

When a group of apes got split apart, slight differences in their new environments led to big differences in future generations.

LEARN MORE
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To learn more about this topic, start your googling with these keywords:
- Chimpanzee: A great ape native to tropical Africa that is one of humanity’s closest living relatives.
- Bonobo: A slightly smaller great ape native to tropical Africa that is one of humanity’s closest living relatives.
- Speciation: A lineage-splitting event in which a population of the same species becomes two different species.
- Allopatric speciation: Speciation that occurs when populations of the same species get isolated geographically.
- Hominini: The taxonomical classification that includes humans, chimps, and bonobos.
- Pan: The taxonomical classification that includes chimps and bonobos.
- Chimpobo: A name we just made up to identify the common ancestor of the chimpanzee and bonobo.
- Congo river: The deepest river in the world and the second largest (behind the Amazon) in discharge volume.
- G-G Rubbing: A form of genital to genital contact bonobos sometimes use to form social bonds.

CREDITS
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Writer, Director, and Narrator: David Goldenberg
Video Illustrator: Sarah Berman
With Contributions From: Henry Reich, Alex Reich, Kate Yoshida, Ever Salazar, Peter Reich, Julián Gómez, Arcadi Garcia Rius
Music by: Nathaniel Schroeder

MinuteEarth is produced by Neptune Studios LLC

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REFERENCES
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Stanford, C. (2019). Personal Communication. Professor of Anthropology and Biological Sciences, University of Southern California.

[joshuaevans]

One that solves conflicts with fighting, and another that solves them with fu- eerrr... Cuddling

[juliep.]

I love how the ape family are embracing yet glare at each other like they don't want to be there. It's like a birthday party or something.

[melskunk]

""""cuddling""""

[jaschabull]

I remember learning about this in Physical Anthropology class in college. Also, it seems to kind of apply to gorillas too (though whether it was to an extent that they speciated is iffy) - the ones in chimp territory eat more fruit and are a bit more on the feisty side, while the ones who live off on their own in the deep jungle are, to paraphrase my professor, "basically living in a giant salad bowl" and are a bunch of chill leaf munchers.

[yurineri]

1:25 That ape just saved he's friend's life, that's a top tier wing man for sure

[fairytease]

for some reason, this reminds me so much of north and south korea

[webchimp]

There was a group (tribe/gang?) of chimps I read about once, they had an outbreak of a disease which by some chance affected the more aggressive members of the troop (that's the one) more than the rest and they died off. The survivors were less aggressive and over following generations they became much less aggressive overall.

[marcopohl]

"Be careful here: this is Donkey Kong Country." -Luigi (from one of my favorite fan-made shows of all time, Super Mario Warfare)

[duchi]

*How this River made Chimps Violent:*
1. A Man was pushed into the River in Lego City

[icegalaxy]

Chimpanzee 1: She's got plants and she's nice.

Chimpanzee 2: Not "plants, but still nice." She's nice because she's got plants. Hell, if I had all these plants. I'd be nice, too!

[lydiaraine]

This reminds me of how different those is ancient Egypt was compared to those is Mesopotamia.
Ancient Egypt had extremely fertile soil and the Nile River was extremely predictable with its flooding they could use to have more food and as natural protection from the outsiders. Meanwhile those is Mesopotamia had severe unpredictable flooding and more famines they became more aggressive and fought a whole lot more with those Around them while Egypt had time, energy, and an abundance of resources to survive and build giant pyramids with no outside conflict and hardly ever any internal conflict either

[mediawolf]

This is probably the most intelligent and enlightening examination of the difference between chimps and bonobos, and why, that I've ever encountered.

[suprslysky]

Why the slight censorship at the end guys? I'd say it's pretty common knowledge that Bonobos do...much, MUCH more than "cuddle" to resolve conflict. And for just about everything else.

I, personally, would love a vid from y'all about why sex has a totally different purpose for them than most species.

If such vid already exists, my bad, just throwing it out there.

[Vexelocity]

Bonobos: *gets hit* HEY MAN WTF IS YOUR PROBLEM????




Also Bonobos: wanna just fuck it off? ;)

[ArticBlueFox]

Chimps and Bonobos are so closely related to Humans, as opposed to our other great ape brethren, that for a short time some scientists argued that hominids should be classified as a type of chimpanzee.

[daveharrison]

Does that leopard really need to be holding a fork for us to know what its intentions are?

[Fantallana]

Anyone else going on a binge watch of bonobo content because of how cool and interesting they are? No? Just me?

[theatheistpaladin]

Yeah, "cuddling". *Waggels eyebrows*

[Teth]

This is a perfect illustration of why humans on different continents advanced so differently. Slight differences in the ecologies where we found ourselves radically altered the course those nodes of our species took. It had nothing to do with who was more "primitive", society was largely a result of access to resources without which we'd all still be in small groups fighting over parcels of hunting land like the rest of the animal kingdom.


Luck plays a bigger role in our success than anyone wants to admit. There was lots of hard work involved, but you can do everything right and still fail if the world wasn't ready for you. Such is life.

[SA-rbxq]

Bonobo parents "cuddle" with their offspring too.