
Female monkeys use wile to rally troops - Jerry2
https://www.yahoo.com/news/female-monkeys-wile-rally-troops-002147976.html
======
marvin
Humans do this too, on occasion. Apart from the obvious but difficult-to-
verify night club anecdotes, here's a well-known historical example:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_feather#World_War_I](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_feather#World_War_I)

~~~
douche
It's really just staggering how little anybody understood about what they were
really getting themselves into with WW1. All of the horrors of modern,
industrial warfare unleashing themselves on a culture still steeped in
Victorian attitudes, and general staffs that had absorbed the lessons of
Sedan, rather than Petersburg or Mukden.

~~~
77pt77
And yet 20 years later, the same but with much better technology.

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stared
...and crows can push cats into a fight:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WANZBs8Za0Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WANZBs8Za0Q),
which I find more spectacular. (There are more such videos, it's not a
singular case.)

~~~
77pt77
If crows ever get the ability to use firearms, humanity is done for...

The level of machiavellian intelligence these animals have is scary.

These crows go so far as to poke these cats mid-fight so as to entice them...

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cjcenizal
Willingness to fight seems to be a successful genetic trait for them. If you
don't fight, your troop starves. I don't think "manipulation" has anything to
do with it... if the troop doesn't pass on successful genes, the troop dies.
So of course the fighters are the ones that mate!

~~~
bjourne
Well, shunning fighting is _also_ a successful trait or else the male monkeys
wouldn't be doing it. A good strategy for them is perhaps to appears as if
they are a great fighters but in reality back down from most dangerous fights.

~~~
thret
Fonzie was famous for (almost) never fighting while cultivating a reputation
for a fierce fighter. Throughout the show, almost without exception, people
would simply back down. For example:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9A-DCWlLfOQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9A-DCWlLfOQ)

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tejtm
Male monkeys manipulate females into lavishing them with attention by
fighting.

~~~
erikb
Yeah, it's more a simple preference, not manipulation.

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sjcsjc
"The riskiest group activity of all is warfare, and few animals other than
humans and monkeys engage in it."

~~~
bootload
_"... few animals other than humans and monkeys engage in it"_

Birds, ants, killer-whales are but a few I can immediately think of.

~~~
daemin
There's fighting to survive against a predator, there's fighting competitors
for mating access, and then there's fighting between groups of the same
animals.

They mean that it's the third option that is rare among animals.

~~~
bootload
" _then there 's fighting between groups of the same animals."_

have you not seen same animals fighting in groups against each other? Take
your point though.

------
known
Machiavellianism (willingness to manipulate and deceive others), Narcissism
(egotism and self-obsession), Psychopathy (the lack of remorse and empathy),
Sadism (pleasure in the suffering of others)

~~~
da1
Dark tetrad?

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MichaelMoser123
And i thought that the alpha monkey gets to do all the mating. The linked
article implies that this is not the case. Are monkeys more egalitarian than
apes?

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dmichulke
Does this mean gay monkeys are more likely to be non-violent?

I don't particularly like the PC hype these days, but I think this could be a
way to separate this from the gender domain and map it on the scarcity
domain...

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ainiriand
This is just another way of securing the best genes for the next generation.
Perhaps a much more sophisticate one.

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gspetr
Males have evolved to extract resources from the environment.

Females have evolved to extract resources from males.

~~~
hashmap
Second comment from the top, "Women are gold diggers."

Screencapping this for when HN's users claim they don't make the tech space
awful for women.

~~~
dang
That's pure sample bias. You can support anything that way.

Which is not to say that this thread isn't bullshit.

~~~
hashmap
When individual comments on Reddit or HN get voted up, they cease to be sample
bias and become a reflection of the community's opinion. That's what these
sites _do_.

I guarantee you'd never see a comment like that voted up on r/2xc.

It's a clear indication of a problem with the community, and there's no way
you don't see that...?

~~~
dang
Sorry I was late to seeing this.

That's still sample bias: plenty of such comments also get downvoted, and
plenty of opposite comments also get upvoted. Drawing general conclusions
about the community in this way is projection.

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da1
> I've been on HN like 8 years

curious because your profile says

> created: 16 days ago

Thank you for confirming you are using a sock-puppet account!

(Edit: While apparently using your main account to down-vote. Classy!)

~~~
midgetjones
'Apparently' how? Because you're being downvoted? I doubt, even if it is a
sockpuppet account (which incidentally has amassed four times the karma you
have), that they are the only one downvoting you.

~~~
coderdude
He's saying that because the person who says they've been here for 8 years
registered 16 days ago. As if, in 8 years of Inflammatory HN commentary, only
just now did they decide to stop lurking. And only just now did they become so
vocal about what matters to them.

That's my interpretation. It could also mean the more obvious, "I've been here
for 8 years but under a different name."

~~~
12-4
> _It could also mean the more obvious, "I've been here for 8 years but under
> a different name."_

Bingo. Why didn't you start with the more obvious interpretation?

I've been here in my estimation for 7-8 years, with maybe the first 2 years of
that being lurking. Check that 4 year old 'ledge' account too and you'll see
that all the facts and stylometric features line up.

When the 'submitting too fast' limitation (which ironically is because you
people were downvoting me) is lifted on my current account, I'll be happy to
angrily post from there again too.

And I'm not using any of these other accounts to downvote anyone, or do
anything deceptive. But how else could I prove that my current account being
16 days old is meaningless? I have made probably 30+ accounts on HN, and I
wish I could find one of the 5-6 year old ones and log into it to really drive
it home that you're wrong.

------
DanielleMolloy
And this is the current top comment. Welcome to Hacker News.

(my reply gets MRA-downvoted in 3.. 2.. 1..)

~~~
cperciva
Please resist making comments about being downvoted. It never does any good,
and makes boring reading. Also, avoid baiting users by announcing that you
expect to be downvoted.

~~~
DanielleMolloy
Please resist trying to teach other users.

~~~
dijit
This is completely off the subject but are you trying to indicate that he is
somehow "man-splaining".

Educating readers as to the code of conduct of the site is required otherwise
you would be downvoted without understanding why and just blaming it on "them
bloody MRA's".

~~~
DanielleMolloy
This is also completely off the subject, but I expect that in few minutes all
my comments disappear as [flagged]. I am -20 from my score before the few
comments in this thread now.

The OP's strongly offensive statement is still one of the top comments for
this article.

Maybe there is something in here to "learn" for you guys.

~~~
douche
Complaining about downvoting is never productive. They are just internet
points.

~~~
DanielleMolloy
Internet points that prove the point. And, as predicted, most of my comments
are [flagged] now. Do you see the little story this tells?

~~~
douche
That making a big stink about getting downvoted is a good way to get downvoted
more?

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lambdasquirrel
Nice article but the changed title is a bit linkbait.

~~~
taneq
> Female vervet monkeys manipulate males into fighting battles by lavishing
> attention on brave soldiers while giving noncombatants the cold shoulder,
> researchers said on Wednesday.

Title is basically the first sentence of the article.

~~~
chongli
Is this really manipulation or is it just sexual selection for
bravery/aggression/dominance? Are the female monkeys being disingenuous with
their attentions or are they sincere? When I read some of the criteria for
manipulation on Wikipedia [0] it seems to me like a pretty high bar to show
these sorts of behaviours in monkeys.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_manipulation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_manipulation)

~~~
da1
> Is this really manipulation or is it just sexual selection for
> bravery/aggression/dominance?

What's the difference?

~~~
tbrownaw
Maybe it's a way to deny them agency and therefore moral responsibility for
the results of their actions?

~~~
adamrezich
Do monkeys have morals? (Legitimate question.)

~~~
da1
Well, they do show in-group preference.

Does that count?

I'd say yes.

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disposablezero
Three monkeys walked into a bar... I mean humans.

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throw2016
I think a big difference between the sexes in humans is male aggression has
the potential for violence while female aggression usually doesn't.

So female aggression is more likely a social aggression, a more civilized
agression that is also perhaps sometimes expressed into violence via their
male counterparts.

But this seems to be rare as humans females across the world are in general
not aggressive. On the contrary they have been victims of extreme male
aggression for thousands of years. Human males are extremely aggressive and
violent towards others males, females and the world.

