A little simian short story

Now that everyone has had a lesson on why chimps are not good house pets, Salon.com brings out a story about primate behavior. Some of the stories are endearing. Some are like this:

A telling anecdote involving Yeroen, the wily old chimp, shows why. When faced with the choice of allying himself with Luit, the strongest, dominant male in his chimp colony, or with Luit's closest rival, Nikkie, Yeroen chose the latter. Yeroen then helped Nikkie displace Luit as alpha male. That left Nikkie heavily indebted to Yeroen, who became the young alpha's puppet master, a far more powerful position than the aged manipulator would have had as Luit's right-hand chimp. The upshot was that Luit had arrogated too much power to himself, for as the colony's sole superpower, he became the leading target for gang-forming alpha wannabes. Coalition-building is everything in the chimp world, where the unilateral exercise of power is insanely dangerous. In the end, the mighty Luit was murdered in the night by Nikkie and Yeroen.

This story, btw, is from Frans de Waal, whose books on primate behavior were consulted to good effect by Newt Gingrich.

the biggest problem is we anthropomorophize them too much, especially the greatest of the great apes.