Today I asked myself what’s worse – killing of your own kind for food or for the sake of killing.
As I watched images initially of four chimps on a patrol attacking a lone chimp from another tribe and then leaving it to die from its injuries and subsequently of a mob of fifteen to twenty chimps taking their turns at jumping on, battering, tearing at and eventually killing yet another lone chimp, the cries and screams and shrieks effected a dull ache in my head which is akin to the feeling brought on by claustrophobia.
And the silence that follows each commotion (more so the latter) is deafening.
I recall negating the prospect of the chimps hunting down one of their own as food as I witnessed the first clash and then recognising the sheer atrocity of the mob lynch. I suppose I do have my biases – chimps are stereotypically uncivilised primates. Henceforth, it follows that it is somewhat acceptable that chimps kill for food (even in the occasion that they prey on one of their own) but chimps killing for the mere sake of killing is truly intolerable. And I suspect this predisposition is ultimately rooted in the chimp’s alleged kinship with man.
