Torture

FREDERICK: You missed a very dull TV show about Auschwitz.More gruesome film clips...and more puzzled intellectuals declaring their mystification over the systematic murder of millions. The reason why they could never answer the question "How could it possibly happen?" is that it's the wrong question. Given what people are, the question is "Why doesn't it happen more often?".

From the film 'Hannah and her Sisters' (1984) Written and directed by Woody Allen


A leading biologist once said that, "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution."*If this is so, make sense of the following observations of chimpanzee behavior:

a)'Martin Muller is as broad shouldered and tall as an England rugby forward, yet he was frightened. It was August 1998 in Uganda. He heard screams and the sound of something being pounded. He ran through the forest towards the noise; when he burst into a clearing he saw 10 chimpanzees had captured and killed another."The pounding that they were doing was on his body. The front of the chimpanzee was covered with 30 or 40 puncture wounds and lacerations, the ribs were sticking up out of the rib cage because they had beaten on his chest so hard. They had ripped his trachea out, they had removed his testicles, they had torn off toenails and fingernails. It was clear that some of the males had held him down, while the others attacked."

b)It was a four-year "war" witnessed by Dr Jane Goodall, and Dr Muller's PhD supervisor, Richard Wrangham, a professor of primatology from Harvard University, Boston, that put an end to our cosy ideas.In the Seventies, Prof Wrangham and Dr Goodall watched a group of chimpanzees split into two factions. One group killed every male and some of the females in the other group. The victims had recently been their companions.