What We Are Getting Wrong With Chimpanzees

2/27/2014
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What We Are Getting Wrong With Chimpanzees

            A Chimpanzee is an amazing creature and is fascinating to watch and learn from. Though they are not our ancestors, they are still a beautiful work of God's art and are one of the most interesting animals on the planet. But, their family structure and alpha ship is what I think we can learn from the most. If we look at those in a certain way, we can definitely brighten the Earth a little bit more than just the grey and black we see today. Let me show you. 

     When you look at the family structure of a Chimpanzees life, it could be considered almost identical to our family structures today. A Chimp community is called a tribe. It can be further subdivided into three groups: first comes the actual family, then the clan, and then one leader rules them all. A family consists usually of a mother, her children, and her grandchildren, which stays together as long as possible.  So organized!  Frankly, we usually do not know the father. But, there have been suspicions on certain infant Chimps and their fathers because the male Chimp rescued the infant from danger or something of the sort; but we do not know if he saved the baby Chimp if because he was the father, or if that was his male duty. Every family tries to be loyal (though it doesn't always work), and that is their number one goal: to keep the family together and alive. Just looking at this, we can learn from them in many ways. Looking at our culture today, we are so divided. Families are getting divorced day by day, and little children are looking to their parent asking them why mommy or daddy left in the middle of the night with a suitcase. When looking at these mother Chimps, they're not saying, "This is how life is so get over it," there saying "What are you doing? Can't you see that when I raise my children alone it's hard? You don’t have to be like me, be better." Since there are so many of us that want to make a difference in the world, can't we make that one of our priorities?

          Also, while we look at structure of the alpha ship, we can see something that we are looking at the wrong way.  The male headship in a Chimps life has very little and meager rewards. And though you might think otherwise, brawns and show are not always enough.  Obviously, affection and loyalty to the clan, family, or tribe is what the Chimps see as enough. Although they do have to tear each other down for that role, in the end if the group does not agree with who is leading them, they will tear down him as well.  Being that there is always something the Chimps are teaching us, they seem to be telling us that we do not have to live under tyrannical rule.  But you might say, "We're not living under tyrannical here in America!"  Well, we're not… for now. Watching the public school systems failing because our kids are being brainwashed by being taught what to think not how to, watching the government take advantage of that and tell these students the opposite of what's true, and then watching this society fail; all because we have grown lazy. We really don't care what happens in the world anymore, as long as we get our electronics and get to know the latest gossip on who's dating who in the celebrity world. We have let what little freedom we have slip into the dust, out of our reach.  Since we have done that, other things have been slipping out of our reach as well, but they are all connected to freedom. These Chimps seem to be telling us that we shouldn't let that happen. They are saying that we need to look at what we are doing, and start making a change in how we do things.

          Although we can't change the world overnight (though that would be awesome!), we can start too slowly. All we need to do, is to start teaching our kids right, start keeping families together, start helping our neighbors around us, and to start looking for God in this society. I guarantee you, if we start doing that, the world will gradually change. It won't happen quickly as we want it to, spoiled as we are, but it will take effect eventually. And we can see this, all from looking at the Chimpanzees family structure, and the way deal with alpha ship.

 

Image taken from:  http://www.worldwildlife.org/species/chimpanzee