Personally, I believe it was the shift from matrilocal to patrilocal focus that led to males seeking dominance and violence to establish dominance. With everything we know thus far, that seems to make the most sense. Becoming pastoral with the rise of agriculture both creates and required some significant changes to how we live our lives and organize ourselves.
How do I know animals don't enjoy violence? My focus of study. My BS is in Wildlife Science, actually. I've watched a lot of animals both on film and IRL and read every field journal I could get my hands on on observations. A lot of conservation writers blog that stuff now.
First off, let's define violence as being an animal thug. We're not.talking about predation, or breeding/rut behaviors. We're not talked ng about defensive type stuff, okay? We're talking about being a thug and starting shit, mostly amongst your own kind.
Consistently, animals have to be driven by desperation (usually for food) to do something that might inspire a response of violence.
Combat during breeding season, while often looking and sounding pretty brutal, is rarely underhanded. It's like a straight on wrestling match that follows rules. Lots of times it's like there's an imaginary referee keeping the contest fair and all parties abide by those rules. It's quite gentlemanly in most species.
Lots of species will shun an overly aggressive personality or drive them out. It's almost always a male.
There's no alcohol or drugs to lower inhibitions to the point of foolishness.
In a lot of species, if there is an accidental injury or trespass, soothing and supplication behaviors reduce the risk of violence. If it's a group species, you'll often see multiple individuals of both sexes de-escalate tensions.
Behaviors that are clearly empathetic, compassionate, and caring are more common that is generally reported. The only time such events make the news is usually when it involves humans. Dolphin saves surfer caught in undertow. Zoo Gorilla rescues child who fell in the most. That kind of thing. We had a horse rescue a kitten out of an apple tree once. You never hear about that kinda stuff, but it's more common than you would think.
Stress levels after acts of violence really elevate to the point of depressing animals. They seem to get PTSD a lot easier than we humans do.
Of course, there's a lot of variation between species. But you see evidence that they're not really thrilled about violence, their behavior minimizes it as much as possible where it exists, if there's a different option they usually take it, the emotional and hormonal after effects are quite unpleasant even for individuals who win a contest, and it doesn't increase survivorship but rather decreases it so evolution has selected against it over all.
Just to reiterate, were specifically talking about animals acting a thug. I am NOT saying animals don't engage in violence. I'm saying they don't seek it out for pleasure or entertainment.
