Learning Too Many Unfortunate Things About Monkeys at 4am

I watched baby monkey on a pig, and went down a rabbit hole into the brutal short life of primatedom.

There is a whole ass section on YouTube just dedicated to following the melodramas of monkeys in southeast Asia that rake in millions(!)of views

Monkeys are reactively violent, as opposed to humans which are proactively violent:

Grown-up humans play more than adults of other species, and we fight far less often than other primates like baboons and chimpanzees. Even the most belligerent human groups ever studied engage in violence about 250 to 600 times less frequently than chimpanzees. (Location 2562)

…hunting and other forms of planned aggression are utterly different psychologically from reactive aggression. Violent criminals, ruthless dictators, torturers, and other proactive aggressors can simultaneously be loving spouses and parents, reliable friends, and patriotic fellow citizens who remain utterly calm and pleasant in situations that would send a chimpanzee or a toddler into a rage. They also don’t need to be as physically powerful. (Location 2657)

^314195

Chimp Mother Carries Corpse for Weeks

There's a lot to unpack here -- the natural instinct of motherhood, burial practices in humans vs other species, the structure of animal societies that say so much without saying a word, grief, the need to anthropomorphize literally every fucking thing, etc.