It's hard to really say if primate teritorial disputes are 'wars' in the same sense that we think of them as humans. Certainly at the basis of all wars, it's about resources - be it land, food, energy or spiritual/religious influence.
But what primates clearly lack is the ability to think about these disputes in terms of what will benefit them in the long term. There is a diference between fighting a strategic war with specific desired outcomes of objectives involving making specific choices about who to attack, who to ally with and what methods to take, and responding to stimuli through instinct. It is also unclear if other primates work together for the common good of the group - which is a cornerstone of human warfare - or merely responding to their own interests in a common way.
Primates "clearly lack" this? What are you basing that on? Their raids do in fact benefit their group as well as its individuals in the long term. And they are in fact fairly strategic (not as strategic as ours, but is that for lack of a strategic mind, or lack of pencil and paper to draw out and share plans?) So how can you possibly say whether or not this was planned or just coincidental? Did you interview the raiding chimps?
The way you state it later in the same paragraph is much more reasonable: "It is also unclear if..." <--yes, this. We don't really know, because you can't exactly get an IRB to approve controlled studies on chimps mangling and raping one another. All we have are uncontrolled observations in the field.
I wonder if primates were restrained to a narrow band of territory, perhaps by a long roll of polyester rope, if perhaps they might not suddenly become better citizens, and better neighbors. They would of course, have to be tied to this long rope in the dark, and held in check by a rope support system. It seems imminently practical, and like one hell of a good idea,methinks!
Well we have these things called fences
Not sure what you're on about with the whole rope thing. Anyway, yes, as you suggest, it seems clearly evident that well fed and looked after chimps with well defined territories are indeed much better citizens. As can be seen in any zoo or laboratory with chimps or other primates in it. Occasional scuffles but rarely mortal attacks. And of course, this lines up well with our own experience as humans.
You are trying to equate the willful well thought out and planned geo/political acts of conquest, slavery, extermination and destruction by man with the natural process of survival of the fittest of all creatures in nature, even in those living in communal societies.
Conquest, slavery, extermination, and destruction are all very well documented in the animal world, across many species. As to how "willful" any of it is is of course always a matter of speculation and inference at the end of the day, since ants and fish and birds and monkeys don't speak English.
But I'm not sure why willfulness matters much anyway in regard to this discussion. It started off in comparing non-human and human primates to one another on some sort of "goodness" scale. And I'm not sure I see why it's particularly more or less "good" to have your family all murdered and dismembered / enslaved in front of you by a "willful" versus a non-"willful" agent. Seems pretty irrelevant to me, in addition to being almost impossible to study with high precision in the first place.
What you call "territorial greed" has been shown to be part of overall survival.
It is part of survival for humans, too. The more land and resources you have, the better you can arm yourself, the more resistant (statistically) you are to drought and famine.
As for routinely doing this, as you like to say, where are the statistics.
Don't need stats because I agree with you: some populations aren't very violent at all. Just like some human populations aren't nearly as violent as others. The particular groups of West African chimps that happen to be studied by anthropologists there might simply be the Canadians of the chimp world. So?
What you haven't shown is a Chimp or Primate Auschwitz
Auschwitz is a ridiculous thing to ever expect from primates purely for logistical reasons, alone.
Primates don't have railroads to move that many enemies into one place at a time.
Primates don't even have a means of travel to have even met that many enemies or know that that many other chimps EXIST
Primates don't have newspapers and radios to spread propaganda, even if they can communicate a call to violence in person.
This does not seem so much to do with humans by merit of being humans, so much as it has to do with humans having access to technology to let craziness spread more efficiently when everything lines up right. If you look at tribal groups of humans, you don't see mass genocide, either. A tribe may go kill everybody next door, but not launch global campaigns to kill more people.
Is that because tribal people are just less "evil" or more moral than industrialized Germans? Almost certainly not. It's much more probably because it's simply logistically impossible.
Nor have I seen evidence of Spider Monkeys, Chimps or any other Primates raiding other territories to take another group of primates or any other animal as slaves, to work for them and provide for their masters, to barter them off as property or extract tribute. Nowhere have I seen or read of any primate, or any other animal for that matter willfully destroying the territory of another, rendering it a useless waste such as Dresden, or the scorch and burn tactics that man has used through history. They do exhibit the behavior of taking to survive. Survival of the fittest in the animal world is far different than what Man considers survival of the fittest. Perhaps your context of "warfare" is based on your experience or possible lack there of.
Ants do pretty much all of those things. And that's just one biological family.
And again, your attempted distinction of "oh they do it to survive but we [implied] don't" is confusing at best. Almost everything we do as nations has survival benefits. Scorching land stops your enemies from getting resupplied (if you are defending), and makes them weaker and less likely to kill you. or if you're invading and can't hold the territory (too far, etc.), scorching stops them from regrouping and retaliating, meaning you are more likely to survive. Slaves are also obviously beneficial to one's survival: they provide labor without using as many resources as citizens, thus leading to more efficient usage of whatever you have and less likelihood of running out and dying off. Etc. etc.
There are some exceptions (religious wars over not very strategic land, holocausts, etc.), but the great majority of the time, it's prefectly rational, even if violent or "immoral."
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