Logical Reasoning

PT140 · S3 · Q3 When chimpanzees become angry

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When chimpanzees become angry at other chimpanzees, they often engage in what primatologists call "threat gestures": grunting, spitting, or making abrupt, upsweeping arm movements.

Given that ...

Chimpanzees sometimes gesture a threat, and sometimes attack.

Why is it that ...

Attacks are almost never preceded by threats, and threats are rarely followed by attacks?

Anticipate

Why would two behaviors that both express anger almost never co-occur?

We often think about Threats being stage 1 of anger and Attack being stage 2.

So how come they either stop at stage 1 or go straight to stage 2? Maybe they are just very aware of whether they're likely to get their ass kicked, to put it elegantly.

If they think they'd lose to an opponent, they just Threat because they don't want that smoke.

But if they think they'd win, they don't bother threatening; they get straight to winning.

Goal

Find a storyline for why a chimp almost never threatens prior to attacking / almost never attacks after a threat?

Which one of the following, if true, most helps to explain the information about how often threat gestures are accompanied by physical attacks?

Chimpanzees engage in threat gestures
No Distinction
This tells us one motivation for threats. Would this also be a potential motivation for attacks? Sure. You might attack a male to attain higher dominance status or attack a male to defend your current status. So this isn't giving us any storyline for why chimps stop at Threats or go straight to Attacks.
3% picked this
Correct
Making threat gestures helps chimpanzees
Why this is right
This explains half the puzzle, at least. If threat gestures vent aggressive feelings, then once a chimp does the physically demanding threats, the urge to attack has been released. Does this explain why they often go straight into attacking? No, but maybe it's just suggesting that if a situation demanded an immediate attack, the chimp would attack without threat. And in all other situations, they would threaten first, which would tire them out so much that they'd lose the will to attack.
Skill tested: Paradox · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.
80% picked this
Threat gestures and physical attacks
No Distinction
There is some appeal to the idea that there is a third option. Let's say that Threats are level 1, Attacks are level 3, and this third option (passive-aggressive sarcasm?) is level 2. Maybe chimps either go from 1 to 2, or from 2 to 3, and that's why threats don't lead to attacks and attacks aren't preceded by threats. But ... we're totally inventing the idea that this third option is an intermediary or that chimps often stop at this intermediate stage or stop at this intermediate stage. The story we'd need to tell to make this answer work involves a lot more Thin Ice than what the correct answer demands.
2% picked this
Chimpanzees often respond to other
No Distinction
Makes sense that threats are often reciprocated. But why don't they escalate to attacks? And why aren't attacks preceded by threats? This answer isn't giving us a story to tell for either of our mysteries.
2% picked this
The chimpanzees that most often
Restates Paradox
This initially feels like it restates (rather than explains) one half of the puzzle: threats aren't followed by attacks. By reciprocal logic, would we know that the chimps that most often attack are ones that least often threaten? No. The ones that most often attack could be chimps that also often threaten (the threats and the attacks would be two separate occasions, but an individual chimp might threat a lot and attack a lot). If we knew that we could divide chimps into two groups, ones that threaten but don't attack, and ones that attack but don't threaten, that might hint at an explanation that it's basically one or the other. You're either wired as a cautious coward who only threatens or you're wired as a brash aggressor who only attacks. But a) the answer does not allow us to divide chimps into those two groups b) that would not give much of a solution, because we'd still be wondering WHY there's this one group that only threatens and this other group that only attacks.
14% picked this

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