CHIMPANZEE POLLS Sometimes, certain sections of a book you readf sometime ago suddenly pop up from the depths of your mind. This is what happened to me today whe a couple of paras from Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens . suddenly emerged from the depths of my memory. They deal with election amon g chimpanzees. Yes we humans are not the only primates to have the battle at the hustings . Our close cousins chimps are not far behind us in this respect Nope they don’t go to the o the polling booth and press a button in the voting machine or shove a ballot paper into a box. Nor do they issue a manifesto making extravagant promises. No chimp with leadership ambitions will promise its people that within a month of it coming to power its fellow chimps would have rupee 15 lakhs in their bank account. First chimps don’t have bank accounts and even if they did , I am sure they are too smart to believe such rubbish. What do you take them for, a bunch of stupid Homo Sapiens? Their election ns are far less complicated . If there is a contest between two chimps for the leadership of a tribe, the leader is decided by majority support. Like humans, chimp contestants pull all stops to win the elections. They share their food with other chimps groom them, pet and play with the babies So if the voters are impressed by all this, acts of a chimp, they will back it. But once a chimp is elected the leader iit is the absolute ruler. It keeps the best morsels of food for itself, treats dissenters harshly and expects the others to groom it. It also has a decisive say in the choice of mates keeping the best for itself. Sounds eerily familiar. Doesn’t it?
Do Chimps conspire with other group leader to win their leadership? Do they agree to build a tree house for other leader? Do they request the other group leader to hack the brain of their own group members? Do they try to prosecute other contestants? Do they call the communication channels as fake news? Do they pay off some women chimps to shut their mouth so that nothing would come out before the election of the leader? Do they sell their group's interest to be elected as a leader over another contestant? I feel human is a little further down the line in the race. Viswa
Dear Balajee, Wanted to read the book but eventually ended up listening to the author on you tube a couple of times ! From the way you have described, all I could come up with is "apple doesn't fall far from the tree!"
So they do not have any qualms about loosing the seat once won. It is for life time. I guess the Chinese PM Xi JinPing leart the trick from the Chimpanzees. hahahhaaa
Chimps don't do all that but humans in TV news channel debates keep showing their closeness to chimps by behaving like a bunch of screeching simians.
Yes it is a lifetime post buty the lifetime culd be cut short if the leader tried to be too bossy. There have been instances of the "ciutiuzens" ganging up and lynching the boss chimp. There is even a video on faceok and youtube on this.