Introduction

How many times have we all heard a human described like a nonhuman animal when they act aggressively or violently? This chapter examines the notion that human violence has its origins in the violence evident in our evolutionary history. The prevailing wisdom is that wildlife are themselves violent, and when humans act violently they are behaving like ‘animals’. The exploration covers examples of violence by wildlife, including tribal ‘war’ between troupes of chimpanzees and rape by numerous non-human animals both interand intra- species. In contrast, the chapter also provides examples of altruism in wildlife, which counters the notion of human compassion as one of the exceptional characteristics setting us apart from the rest of the animal kingdom. The chapter aims to further challenge anthropocentric legislation by exemplifying common characteristics between wildlife and humans and in so doing set the scene for further exploration of the legal personhood of wildlife in Chapters 7 and 8.

Human violence stems from our animal origins

Animal violence is used to make inferences about human violence (Bradshaw et al, 2005). It is ironic, though, that people blame our nonhuman animal nature and/or origin for humans’ violent behaviour. The irony comes from the (repeated) observation that humans are much more aggressive than other species of non-human animals (Georgiev et al, 2013). Georgiev et al (2013) speculate that humans’ tendency for high levels of aggression and violence likely stems from an unusually high benefit-to-cost ratio resulting from such actions (that is, violence often leads to positive results in obtaining food, property, territory or ‘mates’). They claim that their speculation about humans is supported by the frequent and widespread occurrence of killings of males by groups of males and of male to female sexual violence (Georgiev et al, 2013).

Yet, the notion that such violence stems from our non-human animal origin is engrained in many aspects of society. One of the founding principles of the discipline of criminology, though this is no longer accepted, is that criminals were people who were atavistic – the idea that such people retained some vestige of animal traits (Vasquez et al, 2014). People who were atavistic were seen to be more ape-like than human-like.