Le coin des amatheurs de sciences version 2
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The peace by the monkeys |
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Arthur C. Clarke |
All started in the Eighties. Near a hotel for tourists in Kenya lived a troop of 62 monkeys, called « troop of the forest ». They came to be nourished in the dustbins of the hotel, but met rival monkeys there (known as « troop of the street sweepers ») blocking the access to them. Result : only strongest from the tribe came to nourish itself here. Thus when an epidemic of bovine tuberculosis burst in 1993, only the dominant males of the troop were touched and disappeared.
The troop in which remained only the females and the small ones reorganized then. The hierarchy was slackened, the delousing replaced the bites. Better, the few surviving males for summer have replaced by « immigrant » monkeys wiser, and the company thus to constitute continues twenty years afterwards to live thus.
This report, of to Robert Sapolsky, isn't the first. Frans de Waal had already studied two species of macaques : rhesus and the macaque with truncated tail. The rhesus is a violent monkey, the other use to reconcile itself after a conflict. When these two species are gathered, one then sees the tails truncated to dominate the rhesus which adopt a quieter behavior. In the following generation, the small ones of the two species live together without problem.
A question remains : if the monkeys are able to evolve as much in a so little time to remove a tyranny or a violence, why don't we ?