Pacifists, don’t ever again tell me that man invented war.

Last night, in the Jungles episode of BBC’s Planet Earth series*, my wife and I watched in growing horror as a giant group of chimpanzees sent out an invasion army to occupy their neighbors’ bit of jungle, which happened to contain some fig trees the aggressors fancied. They gathered at the border of their own territory like a hairy tank division, and boldly struck out into their unsuspecting neighbors’ lot, halting at intervals to sound out the terrain like Vietnam commandos—I was almost surprised that the leader didn’t raise a closed fist in the universal Halt gesture. Quietly they surrounded a bunch of particularly attractive fig trees, and only when the fig-eaters in the canopy were completely boxed in did the attackers commence to shout, beat the trees, jump around, and generally raise a ruckus, before climbing up the trees to beat the shit out of their neighbors.

The raid was succesful, the neighbors fled, the group claimed the fig trees. Oh, and since a chimp cannot live on fruit alone—or rather, can, but apparently prefers not to—the raiders proceeded to eat the baby chimp they’d killed in the attack.

Oh well. I suppose it’s yet another strong argument for man’s primate ancestry…

* Magnificent! Breathtaking! Awe-inspiring! Must-have! Name a superlative and it applies to this incredible series, for which the term “nature documentary” applies as fittingly as “hill” applies to Everest. To end this post on a positive note, the episode lamented here opens with jaw-crackingly hilarious footage of the bizarre mating rituals of birds of paradise. The entire series are available on Amazon.com; I’ve conveniently linked the image to the corresponding Amazon page.