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The Conditions Favoring Between-Community Raiding in Chimpanzees, Bonobos, and Human Foragers

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Abstract

Chimpanzees, bonobos, and human foragers share a fission-fusion social system and a mating system of joint male resource defense polygyny. Within-community skew in male strength varies among and within species. In this study, we extend a mathematical model of within-group male coalition formation among primates to derive the conditions for between-community conflicts in the form of raids. We show that the main factor affecting the presence of successful raiding is the likelihood of major discrepancies in party strength, which are set by party size distributions (and thus community size) and the skew in strength. This study confirms the functional similarities between the raiding of chimpanzees and human foragers, and it supports the “imbalance of power” hypothesis for raiding. However, it also proposes two amendments to this model. First, the absence of raiding in bonobos may be attributable more to potential female involvement in defense against raids, which increases the size of defensive coalitions. Second, the model attributes some of the raiding in humans to major contrasts in instantaneous fighting ability created by surprise raids on unarmed victims; it also draws attention to the distinction between minor raids and major raids that involve multiple bands of the same community.

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Acknowledgments

CvS and GRP thank A.H. Schultz Foundation for financial support. The authors also thank the anonymous reviewers for comments on the earlier version of the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, University of South Florida, 4202 E Fowler Ave, ISA2019, Tampa, FL, 33620, USA

    Sagar A. Pandit, Gauri R. Pradhan & Hennadii Balashov

  2. Anthropological Institute and Museum, University of Zurich, Winterthurerstrasse 190, CH-8057, Zurich, Switzerland

    Carel P. Van Schaik

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  1. Sagar A. Pandit
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  2. Gauri R. Pradhan
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  3. Hennadii Balashov
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Correspondence to Gauri R. Pradhan.

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Pandit, S.A., Pradhan, G.R., Balashov, H. et al. The Conditions Favoring Between-Community Raiding in Chimpanzees, Bonobos, and Human Foragers. Hum Nat 27, 141–159 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-015-9252-5

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