Acorn Woodpeckers Have Multi-Day Wars, and Birds Come from All Around to Watch
I find these animal behavioural studies fascinating.<p>There is always the risk of personification clouding our understanding, when we observe similarities to human behaviour. But another angle is de-personification of our own behaviour. That seems insightful in all sorts of way.<p>Certain behaviours, like "war," almost certainly predate cognitive modernity... modern human consciousness. Gwynne Dyer, a historian of war, had some interesting comparisons of humans and chimps. Many interesting similarities.<p>In any case, the ways that we rationalize our warfare, tribalism and such cannot actually be the <i>reason</i> for war. The warfare predates even our ability to formulate such rationalizations. This has a lot of applicability in our personal lives. Is the reason I did X really Y, or is Y a post fact rationalization?