Comparative evolutionary perspectives on violence

Perhaps more than for any other human behavior, the evolutionary heritage of violence has been the subject of vigorous debate: whether shared patterns of intra-specific aggression between humans and other species doom us to a bloody existence. This chapter reviews intra-specific aggression and violence among mammalian species, focusing on primates. It highlights three themes: aggression is a part of everyday life for most social animals; the vast majority of conflicts in animal societies are of low intensity; there are extraordinary examples within the broad spectrum of aggressive behaviors seen in nonhumans that conform to even the most anthropocentric definitions of violence. To illustrate the latter, the chapter reviews violence in chimpanzees, the extant species most closely related to humans and which, next to humans, exhibits the most spectacularly gruesome and varied aggressive repertoire in mammals.