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The Why Factor: What Can Chimps Teach us About Politics?

Why can chimps teach us about politics?

27/11/2017 GMT

What Can Chimps Teach us About Politics?

BBC World Service - The Why Factor, What Can Chimps Teach us About Politics?

What politicians might learn from chimps and other primates about politics

What politicians might learn from chimps and other primates about politics, from bribing voters to forming coalitions and managing conflict.

Professor James Tilley finds out what we can learn about politics from the power struggles within chimpanzee groups and how our evolutionary past affects the political decisions that we make today. Interviewing primatologists, evolutionary psychologists and political scientists, he explores the parallels between our political world and that of other primates. These include the way politicians form coalitions, how people choose leaders, loyalties to parties and even how, and when, we go to war. These similarities to other primates reflect our evolutionary heritage and the way in which stone-age human groups settled disputes internally and externally.    

(Photo: A female chimpanzee yawns as two others nod-off, while they sit on rocks in a family group, at Taronga Zoo, Sydney. Credit: Getty Images)

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