Spider monkeys go to war

Spider Monkey on Watch, originally uploaded by churoval.

Spider monkeys go to war, according to a an article in The New Scientist:

Raiding parties, subterfuge and warfare - chimps and humans use these tactics, but now they have been observed in a non-ape for the first time. [...]

Spider monkeys (Ateles geoffroyi) usually spend all their time in the trees, so the researchers were amazed to see these males creeping along silently in single file on the ground, looking about them and rarely stopping to feed. [NS]

The full-text is behind the pay wall, unfortunately.

Comments

[John]

You have some primates going to war in the previous comment thread. I think all of us monkeys are doomed.

[Republic of Palau]

The previous issue of the NS had an excellent article on how proto-humans and apes continued to hybridise even after their evolutionary diversion... now this. I get the impression the editors are trying to tell us something about our essential primate nature :)

[LeTigre]

Wolves 'go to war' with other wolf packs or kill off coyotes (who, in turn, kill fox). Chimpanzees attack and kill other chimps. Various species of beaked whales, dolphins, and porpoises fight each other. Some Marine Biologists even have a slick term for it: the 'whale wars'. Killer whales are so vicious in their attacks on female and young sperm whales that a few people want to 'imprison willy'. Some killer whale pods also waste alot of meat (ripping the tongues out of minke whales they have killed and leaving the rest to rot). Lions and hyenas seem to have an intense hatred for one another, especially the big male lions vs the hyena female alphas. Lions will also kill off cheetah cubs indiscriminately. And none of the examples mentioned kill each other in order to feed exclusively from the dead bodies. It might be said the 'wars' are fought over diminishing resources. This may be true for some incidents, but even when food resources are plentiful, the 'wars' carry on.

Dolpins, porpoises, and beaked whales may be 'at war' one month, and then found feeding along side one another the next month. Apparently, some of the smaller toothed whales can 'forgive and forget'.

Such animal behaviours: going to war---are not exclusive to homo sapiens, nor just to primates.

We could behave more like porpoises and 'let it go' than like army ants (or lions/hyenas) indiscriminately attacking anything that moves and perpetually at war.

With that said, Bush is not a chimp. He's related to either the lion, the hyena, or an ant. Can't be a lion---they fight their own battles. Can't be a hyena---the females run the clan. Therefore, GW is an ant.