Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence Free

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Years ago I could hardly contain my repulsion as I watched a group of chimps eating the guts of a screaming monkey. The film was one of a series of British Broadcasting Corporation nature films being shown at an international ethological conference. Only our being ethologists gave us entry into the forbidden world of chimp aggressiveness because the film had been censored to keep public ecological enthusiasm up and running. Who would support conservation efforts after seeing a scene of such cruelty? The BBC crew assured us that adult chimps normally kill their prey before eating it and that these were young chimps training in the art of hunting. Or maybe they were just playing with their food? Years later, in the Toronto Zoo, I watched an orangutan mother play with her newborn in a way that looked very much like child abuse. I also remember watching from a shore. Brunner D. Coronavirus Resource Center. All Rights Reserved. Twitter Facebook Email. Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence Issue. Dani Brunner, PhD. Save Preferences. Privacy Policy Terms of Use. Sign in to access your subscriptions Sign in to your personal account. Institutional sign in: OpenAthens Shibboleth. Create a free personal account to download free article PDFs, sign up for alerts, and more. Purchase access Subscribe to the journal. Sign in to download free article PDFs Sign in to access your subscriptions Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence in to your personal account. Get free access to newly published articles Create a personal account or sign in to: Register for email Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence with links to free full-text articles Access PDFs of free articles Manage your interests Save searches and receive search alerts. Get free access to newly published articles. Create a personal account to register for email alerts with links to free full-text articles. Sign in to save your search Sign in to your personal account. Create a free personal account to access your subscriptions, sign up for alerts, and more. Purchase access Subscribe now. Purchase access Subscribe to JN Learning for one year. Sign in to customize your interests Sign in to your personal account. Create a free personal account to download free article PDFs, sign up for alerts, customize your interests, and more. Privacy Policy. Sign in to make a comment Sign in to your personal account. Create a free personal account to make a comment, download free article PDFs, sign up for alerts and more. Our website uses cookies to enhance your experience. Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence by Richard W. Wrangham

Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence is a book by Richard Wrangham and Dale Peterson examining the evolutionary factors leading to human male violence. Demonic Males begins by explaining that humanschimpanzeesbonobosgorillasand orangutans are a group of genetically related great apesthat humans are genetically closer to chimps than chimps are to gorillas, and that chimps and bonobos are most closely genetically related. After speculating about what enabled humans' ancestors to leave the rainforest the use of roots as sources of water and foodDemonic Males next provides a catalog of the types of violence practiced by male chimpanzees intragroup hierarchical violence, violence against females, and extragroup murdering raids. The high incidence of rape by nonalpha male orangutans and infanticide by male gorillas are also cited as examples of our mutual genetic heritage. The authors present chimp society as extremely patriarchal, in that no adult male chimpanzee is subordinate to any female of any rank. They present evidence that most dominant human civilizations have always been likewise behaviorally patriarchal, and that male humans share male chimpanzees' innate propensity for dominance, gratuitous violence, war, rape, and murder. They claim that the brain's prefrontal cortex is also a factor, as humans have been shown experimentally to make decisions based both on logic and prefrontal cortex-mediated emotion. In the chapter "The Peaceful Ape", the authors contrast chimpanzee behaviors with those of the bonobo, presenting logical biological reasons for the more pacific although also aggressive and antagonistic behaviors of the latter. Contested: Heisterman et al. The authors consider male violence to be evolutionarily undesirable and morally reprehensible explicitly detailing the Hutu - Tutsi cross-genocides in Africa's Great Ape habitats, and citing Charlotte Perkins Gilman 's Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence utopian novel Herland []and argue that the advent of modern weapons such as nerve gas and Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence bombs threatens our collective future. Like Steven Pinker 's The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declinedwhich makes the case that violence has been decreasing in human society over time, Demonic Males makes the case that human males are genetically predisposed to violence, but that our species also has the intellectual capacity to override this flaw if we recognize that it is in our survival interest to do so. In a political interpretation of Demonic Males, biologist Philip Regal says that the book is partly an attack on the deconstructivist feminist theory that male violence is a purely social construct. Regal also considers the book to be "a broadside against the old utopian dreams of Atlantis, Eden, Elysium, a Golden Age, Romantic paintings, and the late Margaret Mead", which imagined human beings as naturally peaceful. The New York Times called it "enjoyable and easy to read", and said it "belongs to the emerging genre of serious scientific books that have something to say about questions of interest to many people, Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence just to specialists". From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Quarterly Review of Biology In Biology of Reproduction55, Categories : non-fiction books Books about men Evolutionary biology literature Biology books English non-fiction literature Human evolution books Literary collaborations Men's studies literature. Namespaces Article Talk. Views Read Edit View history. Help Learn to edit Community portal Recent changes Upload file. Download as PDF Printable version. Add links. Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence | JAMA | JAMA Network

Interesting and convincing proposal regarding why men are violent. I had not really thought about this before. I suppose I Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence that men's violent inclinations and drive to dominate and succeeed Forget Rousseau. Forget Konrad Lorenz. Wrangham and Peterson say that after 40 years of gorilla and chimpanzee watching, it is hard not to conclude that human males are but evolutionary heirs of male Richard W. WranghamDale Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence. Whatever their virtues, men are more violent than women. Why do men kill, rape, and wage war, and what can we do about it? Demonic Males offers startling new answers to these questions. Drawing on the latest discoveries about human evolution and about our closest living relatives, the great apes, the book unfolds a compelling argument that the secrets of a peaceful society may well be, first, a sharing of power between males and females, and second, a high level and variety of sexual activity, both homosexual and heterosexual. Dramatic, vivid, and sometimes shocking, but firmly grounded in meticulous scientific research, Demonic Males will stir controversy and debate. It will be required reading for anyone concerned about the spiral of violence undermining human society. ShankerTalbot J. He resides in Massachusetts. Wrangham ia a professor of biological anthropology at Harvard University.