Chimps without hoods.

I watched an interesting documentary the other day about chimpazees and drew some amazingly close comparisons with some of the modern, misunderstood youth of todays society.

They live in family groups, the chimps that is, some of them quite large. They have a strict heirarchy and appropriate acceptible behaviour levels. Any deviation from this is enforced rigorously and is quite brutal if needed to make the correct point and quell the insurrection. Itis over when itis over and normality returns to the fold. It appears that this is how they sort out the pecking order to sustain a successful group. The adolescents practice this behaviour amongst themselves as a preparation for the big wide world when they are mature enough to see and fit into the bigger picture.

The adolescent chimps appear to prefer to hang around in gangs, terrorising the small, weak or aged when the opportunities allow and appear to get great fun out it. The pester the bloody hell out of them (we call it bullying) and generally make their lives a misery. Getting their kicks I presume. They are unable to settle for any long period of time and appear to get, what I would called bored, for want of a better word. Then they are off looking for their kicks to amuse and stimulate themselves.

The ones they don't mess with are the higher ranking males or females, because that means serious trouble. A bit like being grounded but with longer, sharper teeth. When these more dominant or mature chimps get really pissed off they are not slow in showing their annoyance and put the rowdy adolescents firmly in their place. A bit like the Police and SAS all wrapped into one but without the long drawn out legal proceedures. Needless to say, the adolescents know exactly who not to piss off. There is also no appeals process. The status quo is restored for a while before they start to gang up on the weak, young and old again. The really troublesome adolescents can be driven out of the group if they are a pain and lose the benefit of numbers for companionship, food and protection.

So maybe this disruptive, disrespectful and annoying behaviour of the hooded hordes is an ancient genetic trend or perhaps some of them are closer to chimpazees than we think. And where are the adults (higher ranking males & females) to sort out the troublesome adolescents ?