Human Impact, Critiqued and Documented

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter discusses how adaptationism puts an end to the idea that lethal aggression in chimpanzees is a nonadaptive byproduct of anthropogenic influences. Perceptions of the behavior of nonhuman primates, particularly chimpanzees, are often distorted by ideology and anthropomorphism. It also disproves the human disturbance theory and follows historical summaries of exactly how anthropogenic disturbance contributed to killings at particular places and times. The chapter mentions the composite human impact factor that uses a measure constructed for the sexually selected infanticide debate about urbanized South Asian monkeys. It considers human hunting as a great threat to chimpanzees and bonobos but is not implicated in chimp-on-chimp violence. It predicts how there will be more male–male intergroup attacks and other sorts of violence as human impact intensifies in the future, which is in sharp contrast to field observations from 1983 to 1998.