Acorn Woodpeckers Have Multi-Day Wars, and Birds Come from All Around to Watch
I find these animal behavioural studies fascinating.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.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.In any case, the ways that we rationalize our warfare, tribalism and such cannot actually be the reason 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?