Lessons from Nature

How does nature inform us about ourselves and our own behavior?

Find and decipher natural phenomena as they relate to the human condition.

A primitive form of husbandry.



We witness here a living breathing example of how domestication must have begun amongst humans.
The symbiotic relationship creates a mutual dependence over time.

Homosexuality in nature is present...just as all mutations come to be and then are propagated because they serve a need or they dissipate because they do not, perhaps to emerge again due to continuing reproduction and the mutations it produced necessarily.

What purpose would homosexual behavior serve?

In a world where natural selection excludes the vast majority of males form the genetic pool, where sexual drives are so powerfully promoted by hormones, to the point of risking life and limb, and where social behavior, promoting survival, necessitates coexistence and coping with sexual energies and male competitiveness, and where dominance is sometimes enforced through less destructive violent practices, we can only guess at to why homosexuality is so prevalent amongst social creatures.

Here's a cool thought experiment:
In the wild incest is also common and copulating with what we would call immature individuals, pedophilia or ephivophilia, is also prevalent...is this an argument that they are healthy or desirable or acceptable?

Do you think the reason why organisms develop their organs, limbs and senses, is to delay death?

Jellyfish are biologically immortal; organisms pro-actively seek to dominate and exploit their environment rather then merely reactively sustain them selves.

Watch this for further elaboration:

Thanks, that's a nice recording.

There Will Be Blood wrote:

Jellyfish are biologically immortal

Maybe that's why jellyfish don't need to develop new organs, or some limbs and senses?

But who knows, maybe there's some sort of struggle they go through and they keep developing some organs, limbs or senses. What do we, humans, really know about how they will look like after a few millions years?

There Will Be Blood wrote:

organisms pro-actively seek to dominate and exploit their environment rather then merely reactively sustain them selves.

I might be wrong, but in my opinion it has nothing to do with why organisms develop organs, limbs and senses.

I think, first they need to protect and sustain themselves, but "to dominate" is a product of larger brains.

Thirsty wrote:

Do you think the reason why organisms develop their organs, limbs and senses, is to delay death?

I'm thinking,

Organs are specialized cell groups and our body is the sum of such specialized cell groups.
I imagine it to be similar to a tribe or a bigger group of people. There will form specializations within such tribes and groups. Hunters, gatherers, handicrafts and so on. Those specialists still have something in common with each other, a heritage or memes. And they work together.

Those specializations will develop and form over time - it's a mix of innate capabilities in the individual and a need. A need of the group and or the individual. I think it's very beneficial if the need of the individual has common ground with the need of the group. That's where a common heritage or idea comes into play.

The heart is content being a heart because it gets what it needs (sustained by the rest of the body) and it has a purpose which is why it gets supported by the rest of the body. Sounds like a circular argumentation. And I think, it is, a circular phenomenon. No beginning and no end in that sense.

Thirsty wrote:

Do you think the reason why organisms develop their organs, limbs and senses, is to delay death?

Can you think of an alternate motive?

Will to power, presupposes a Will.
To act, presupposes an actor.

The "to" is the need, the inescapable absence.
The "power", "life", or any absolute, is the projection of the absent absolute.

Need, projects its fulfillment, in an other.

"Will" is the entire past of "to" or towards, directing this past, this arrangement of organs, energies, ordering, towards fulfillment - the ideal.

The beauty of the Hellenic spirit, the noble masculine spirit.
To know, or to think it most probable, that the ideal will never be attained, and to realize that the "to", the towards, is all there is, and to will anyways.

To ride the wave, like a surfer - to ride the tiger - knowing that there is no shore and that eventually the wave will drown you, and for that moment, to rejoice, in the act of surfing, and to admire the wave that will take you, and to laugh, with joy, at the ride.

Why does the Jewish spirit dominate, in the minds of the many, and not the Hellenic spirit?
Because the Hellenic spirit never wanted to dominate, but did anyways.

Thanks a lot.

Satyr wrote:

Thirsty wrote:

Do you think the reason why organisms develop their organs, limbs and senses, is to delay death?

Can you think of an alternate motive?

I also thought about it as - a manifestation of fusion of streams of energy

So, to manifest would mean to invest available energies to show up, to blossom, to occupy new territory, to dominate/control a territory.

But there is no fear of death but rather a direction / a reason to reach out beyond itself.

How can there be growth, or direction, or anything, without previously maintaining what has already been gained?
To build muscle, to conquer, to learn, you must first consolidate, defend what you have.

The "overflowing" many speak of is, for me, this excess of energies once self-maintenance has been dealt with.

In nature a female may abort a fetus, or even kill a young one, if she cannot sustain herself first.
She sacrifices her investment in growth, for the sake of self-preservation.

For me, energies can be directed as direction, creation, procreation, when there is an excess of them.

Satyr wrote:

The beauty of the Hellenic spirit, the noble masculine spirit.
To know, or to think it most probable, that the ideal will never be attained, and to realize that the "to", the towards, is all there is, and to will anyways.

I can see why death is not so feared by a Hellenic, now. They know already that immortality is not achievable, so why not have a good time and try their best doing as they feel? To love themselves and push and test their limits in a controlled and aware manner. To fight, even if in the end they know their progeny and themselves are doomed.

I found the idea of Satyr making a thread distinguishing nature from human beings to be curious. This whole forum is about nature. Were you, Satyr, trying to liven discussion through making a topic more obvious?

Slaughtz wrote:

I can see why death is not so feared by a Hellenic, now. They know already that immortality is not achievable, so why not have a good time and try their best doing as they feel? To love themselves and push and test their limits in a controlled and aware manner. To fight, even if in the end they know their progeny and themselves are doomed.

From my own experience, I found that when I was younger, I was not aware in a situation - when it would have been necessary. So I was either frightened or aggressive without being self-aware. Later, I either regretted being fearful, not standing up to someone or my impulsive aggressive outburst. Then I was angry - that I wasn't aware within the moment.

After having experiences of that kind, the time delay between a given situation and the moment of situational awareness, of self-awareness shrunk. And then it became so small that I started to become aware within the situation, within the moment.
To me, it's like a part of myself becomes detached and observes the situation itself, observes myself and the surroundings. That is a moment of awareness for me. With increased experience and trained insight into others that awareness becomes a more powerful force. I can give in, I can attack, I can be defensive but, the difference is my situational awareness - because in that moment, I don't react but I act. And so I don't regret anything later. With strong will-power it's even possible to give in to the moment, to surrender, to let the feminine aspect surrender and still to grasp the moment again when things get out of hand.

I think it actually serves as a training - to give in and grasp the moment again with awareness. I am not saying that I have mastered this sufficiently, I haven't, by far not - but that's my thought on that balance act of the moment.

In the swordsman traditions of feudal Japan - there is at the core that awareness - because in a fight it's important to not be overwhelmed by the fear of death as to still fight well.
All techniques are meaningless if the fighter is afraid to get hit. He will be in a defensive position in his mind - the enemy controls him with his sword.

We find ourselves in the ironic position of having to defend nature within the contexts of human ideals, concepts, and artifices.
Irony of ironies.

In this arena of fools, the two, hypothetical, opponents are some form of Capitalism and some form of Communism, completing the modern box (consuming, producing, utility) within which man guides his interests.
If you are not one, then you must be the other, or so it seems, because nothing outside this binary system is permitted entry without being placed no one or the other side.
Both sides are anti-nature to one degree or another, but they present themselves as each-other's antagonists, when, in fact, they share the same idealization and mythologies concerning the system they are a part of.
This is similar to the Satan/God dichotomy, where both hypothetical opposite sides are part of the same mindset, appeasing the same psychological disease, and offering the illusion of choice.
See Democrats/Republicans in the US, the nation where indoctrination has achieved a peak of effectiveness unprecedented in history.

I admit that it is true that from genetics memes arise, and so man creates political and socioeconomic systems by observing nature.
The bee colony is the perfect example of applied communism: a uniformity of appearance, and behavior, where all work for a shared goal and all partake in equal, or nearly so, measure from the fruits of their labors.
No thinking permitted for thinking may lead to a sophistication of consciousness, which unavoidably is the same as discrimination - because to perceive is to be aware of a divergence.

On the other side we have the more natural, for man, example of a community based on a hierarchy, and dominated by a singular masculine authority, like primate social structures, but here man imposes a slight tweak, which uses state power to protect elites through the guise of the myth of ownership.
With Capitalism we find the human intervention on primate social structures where domination is preserved so as to maintain internal stability.
In nature there is no such institutionalized power preserving genetic domination, despite genetic weakness, because the sheltering of the elites from the challenge to their position means that degradation, and decadence will ensue.
And we see this happening.

Now, challenge either side trapped in this dichotomy and you will be accused of belonging to the other side.
By far the most pathetic and hypocritical are the modern day liberals, or progressives, as they identify themselves.
Some prefer the humanist label, connecting them to some transcendental global ideal.

It is amongst this group that nihilism fins its most obsessive and hypocritical followers/believers, because the motive is self-preservation, and power, and sexual accessibility, masking as universalism, fairness, goodness, and moral virtue.
Amongst this crowd, attracting the most followers, we find this hatred towards nature, hidden beneath a romantic idealistic "selfless" love of it, which characterizes all their usages of the term "love", but that is, in fact, self-serving, selfishness, hatred, because thee is no acceptance of nature, but a selective denial and rejection of it.

For such creatures, with such minds, the mentioning of nature and natural processes must be connected to the only opposition they can comprehend: capitalism, or the "right", as some more worldly types call it.
To speak of nature and simply state that there no human values are present, no justice, no fairness, no equality, no pity, but that it is only within social creatures where we see the beginning of these social methods of unifying divergent genetics into a stable group.
Social behavior is a consequence of individual insecurity and inadequacy. The repression of some part of will so as to be a part of an unstable whole so as to gain from participation, must offer the individual organism some unperceived genetic advantage that has nothing to do with ideals or human excuses.

The beginnings of social behavior must be sought in the most primitive creatures:


Here we see how the confusion of this behavior protects individuals form being focused upon by a predator. The uniformity of movement produces the effect of a larger species, immunizing the small individual from the majority of smaller predators, or those predators with less sophisticated methods of hunting and perceiving.
The individual fish need not develop any sophistication, or await some mutation that will help it understand its interests in indulging in this activity, all that must happen is for natural selection to filter out individuals not prone to this behavior, leaving those that are.
The individual is born with a mutation that allows it to consciously or visually (imprinting, perhaps) upon the fish before it, and ti simply follows its movements, and those slight movements of every other fish within its visual field.
It is an entirely automatic (re)active affair, and it is what we call slave psychology or herd psychology: this follow the leader, the or the neighbor, automatically, (re)actively with little reasoning.

if you ask the human variant why he does what he does or why he believes what he believes and thinks what he thinks he will not be able to explain it.
He will not be able to defend his actions and thoughts without evoking some abstract hypothetical forces, outside its own control and willfulness.
The mechanism is within him but he must protect the ego by placing it outside himself, as some universal standards, some undeniable, transcending idea, some thing or a divine force.
He will seek support from others in his predicament, sharing in their confusion, and find in this shared confusion and the common methods developed to justify and to preserve the behavior, a comforting argument for it.

Anything which disrupts this behavior and its automatic ease, will be labeled in a way which dismisses it (protection), but also does not require a rational argument to confront it.
The emotion, that automatic reaction to sensual stimuli, is enough.

We will note in the above video how the school of fish appears to settle upon a circular motion, before some tidal disturbance makes them tumble into a confused jumble, and then return towards the circular.

The disturbance, let us equate with time, or entropy, the flow towards absolute randomness creating fluctuations, because uniformity has not reached a level of leveling and pockets of "disturbance (matter, energy patterns) still remain.

The circular motion is a form of solipsism (in the area of thought), or the towards unification, the absolute ORDER (God, singularity).

The self-referential thinking of man trying to close itself off from the turbulence of the environmental ebbs and flows, is represented here beautifully.
The fish in the middle of this vortex of bodies can be said to occupy the median, the center, they mediocre.
They are the most distant form the surrounding environment - nature.
The ones on the periphery are not so fortunate, but they are more aware of what surrounds them, and so they try to push themselves towards the middle or they focus on the fish around them.

The same social phenomenon amongst birds:




This is how social behavior is naturally selected amongst animal population who cannot deal with the environment on their own.
For such a kind anyone not wanting to participate, or questioning this behavior, must be mad, or ill, or a liar, or some kind of mindless predator.

If we transfer this to thinking we find the same phenomenon but this time in the area of thoughts and ideas.

The moment you begin talking about a corrective intervention upon nature, whatever reason you give it and whatever motive you claim as your own, you are entering into the realm of ideals: political, moral and philosophical ideas.

At the point you are dealing with ideas, inspiring ideals, which divert in degree, or that completely contradict the natural.
Then you must justify why you consider your 'corrections' to nature superior, or better, by evaluating the collateral effects, and how they are preferable to what already exists in natural law.

But one thing is for certain, you can no longer speak of authenticity, or reality, or non-authoritarianism, because what you propose demands the imposition, upon other minds, of a standard which is manmade and refers to nature to a degree, depending on its nullifying spirit in relation to nature.
The "high" ground is lost.

Then it becomes a matter of evaluating the type of man the particular intervention will bring about and shelter from a natural world that does not care about human constructs.

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Form and Rhythm:

Quote :

"Emile Benveniste has analyzed the linguistic roots of the word rhythm as it was used in ancient Greek tragedy and philosophy, and has shown that the meaning of rhythm as we understand it today originated not, as commonly understood, from an observation of nature, specifically of the ebb and flow of the ocean’s waves, but from a particular determi- nation of the original signification of rhythmos. All etymological dictio- naries, Benveniste notes, cite the verb rhein, “to flow,” as the root of rhythmos. The problem lies not with the morphological derivation of rhythmos from rhein, but from the extrapolation that the notion of rhythm had been taken from the observation of waves. In ancient Greek, rivers “flow,” but oceans neither flow nor are said to have a “rhythm.” The terms that describe the movements of the waves are entirely different. However, Benveniste cites numerous examples—from Aristotle, Democri- tus, Leucippus, Herodotus, Archilochus, Anacreon, Aeschylus, and Plato—to show that the original meaning of rhythmos is synonymous with skhema, or “form.” However, “rhythm” is a very particular determination of “form,” one that Benveniste describes in the following way:

There is a difference between skhema and rhythmos; skhema in contrast to ekho (“je me tiens”) is defined as a fixed “form,” realized and viewed in some way as an object. On the other hand, rhythmos, according to the contexts in which it is given, designates the form in the instant that it is assumed by what is moving, mobile and fluid, the form of that which does not have organic consistency; it fits the pattern of a fluid element, of a letter arbitrarily shaped, of a robe which one arranges at one’s will, of a particular state of character or mood. It is the form as improvised, momentary, changeable. Now, rhein is the essential predication of nature and things in the Ionian philosophy since Heraclitus and Democritus thought that, since everything was procured from atoms, only a different arrangement of them produced the difference of forms and objects. We can now understand how rhythmos, meaning literally “the particular manner of flowing,” could have been the most proper term for describing “dispositions” or “configurations” without fixity or natural necessity and arising from an arrangement which is always subject to change.

Form, for Goethe, is nothing but a fleeting manifestation, a resting point of that which is always on the verge of metamorphosis. Indeed, Goethe sug- gests that the use of the word Gestalt (form) in the German studies of natural history of his time is misleading, since “with this expression they exclude what is changeable and assume that an interrelated whole is identified, defined, and fixed in character.” Rather, Goethe proposes the substitution of the word Bildung (formation) for Gestalt, in order to convey the perpetual motion of all natural and particularly organic manifestation. In other words, Goethe understands form as “rhythm” in the ancient sense that Benveniste explicates. Such an insistence on the equal importance of both form and force clearly shows Goethe’s awareness that the way one approaches nature cannot be separated from what one thinks nature is. In other words, science is not merely a question of the interpretation of a preexisting reality, in terms, for example, of mechanism or of vitalism, of forces or of isolatable particulars. Rather, “reality” is actually created in and reflected by the chosen approach. Thus, the manner of approaching nature cannot be judged simply by its quantitative results (the amount of information gathered, the number of phenomena explained), but must also be questioned qualitatively, in terms of the way nature is configured by it... the “vegetative soul”." [Miller, The Vegetative Soul]

The shift in etymology of the word "rhythm" began to give rise to "dead metaphors"...

Quote :

"The relationship between what we loosely call “nature,” on the one hand, and the human creativity that includes the attempt to make sense of that same “nature,” on the other, has often been conceived of as the locus of the earliest of metaphors. Metaphor itself has been described as the result of a slow progression in human cognition from the immediate and the sensory to the abstract and conceptual. The story goes something like this: the earliest humans had much more intimate contact with the natural environment, which they strove to master and in the face of which they were extremely vulnerable, but whether in domination or in subordination they had a fundamental relationship with the raw, natural elements that is unknown to most human beings today. The first civilizations arose as a result of the taming of nature through the development of agriculture and the domestication of ani- mals, as well as the taming—through a social contract that exchanges certain freedoms for the guarantee of protection—of naturally hostile initial relationships between human beings. “Culture” itself could not emerge until this initial double mastery of nature and of human nature had reached a stage of some stability, so that the visual arts, music, and writing were all products of leisure and of a secure and sedentary life. The earliest mythologies were personifications of the forces of nature and allegorizations of natural processes. As culture and language pro- gressed, a transfer slowly took place from raw, immediate, sensuous experience to more abstract notions. These non-sensory concepts could only be put into language by referring them in turn to the elements of original experience, which explains the etymological derivations of many abstract words whose roots point to sensory experience yet which designate ideas that cannot be empirically presented. The nouns of our language, as a result, are a complicated mixture of names of things that can be ostensively designated and conceptual or metaphysical terms that have lost all contact with the experience from which they were derived.6 Such metaphysical terms may be called “dead” metaphors." [Miller, The Vegetative Soul]

From Chapter 6, "Death - The Servant of Life" of Why Civilizations Self-Destruct:

Pendell, Elmer wrote:

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How many ancestors have you had in the 100,000 generations of man since the great days of Australopithecus ? Even a computer would be incapable of answering, because many of our ancestral lines have merged.

Nevertheless, the number of your direct ancestors runs into the millions. In your great-grandfather's generation, you had eight ancestors. In the tenth generation before you, you had 1,024 direct ancestors, unless there were some cousin marriages. Since each ancestor had two parents, just try doubling the numbers for each generation. Allowing thirty years per generation, in the last ten generations you had 2,046 ancestors. That many forbears since New Amsterdam became New York !

In the 20th generation before you, you had more than a million ancestors. In 100,000 generations the figures would be fantastic, if it were not for the merging of ancestral lines. With all the genealogy in your family tree, it is not surprising that favorable variations and mutations, together with the elimination of the tribal members who did not share them, have given you some special talents--most importantly, talents that have to do with thinking.

Unfortunately, a great deal of suffering took place as these favorable mutations and variations were imprinted in your heredity. The evolutionary process brought about the untimely death of countless individuals who lacked favorable variations and mutations. Hunger, cold, accidents, germs and carnivores also took a frightful toll. Yet, among the many millions of your direct ancestors, not one was a victim of infant mortality. Every one of your forebears had what it took to survive ! Otherwise, you would not be here.

As an example of evolutionary extremism, we can point to the Black Death. What more conclusive proof do we need to show:

(1) That the benefits of civilization are not free;
(2) That evolution's wild, almost hit or miss, method makes evolution awfully costly;
(3) That human reason has done a good job breeding domestic animals and plants, and could also do a good job, given the chance, with humans.

The Black Death struck England in 1348. Within two years, says the Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, "a loss of one-third of the population appears to be indicated in many cases, and a much greater loss in a few villages and towns."

Before the plague struck, the English people had been increasing for many years and were outstripping the food production necessary to keep them alive. Conditions were verging on famine when the Black Death arrived from China via Italy.

In London nine-tenths of the inhabitants were lost. Although "lost" seems to imply harm, this is one of those instances in which a short-run minus can be a long-run plus. As a consequence of so many deaths, labor was scarce and land became plentiful. Wages shot up in spite of "controls." Enclosure of lands for use as sheep pasture was profitable. All in all, Englishmen who survived the plague were more secure and worth more per capita than the more numerous Englishmen of the previous era.

There were also some genetic benefits. The Black Death was bubonic plague in combination with primary pneumonic plague. Fleas transported on rats were the main carrier. The Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences tells us that the proportion of deaths among the "richer classes" was low.

We may safely assume that the "richer classes" included more than an average proportion of capable people, and that the crowded slums held more than their share of incapable people. Also, since intelligent persons, whether rich or poor, are more careful about rats and insects than unintelligent persons, a smaller percentage of the former would have been bitten by the infectious fleas. In Scotland, "the meaner sort and common people" comprised most of the plague victims.

The Black Death, a concentrated dose of evolution, helped to usher in a society which was more efficient than the one that had preceded it, while it also set the stage for the agricultural revolution. Because of the scarcity of workers, more attention had to be paid to developing labor-saving devices for the farm. Freed by necessity from the "web of custom," more analytical minds went to work. A new wave of prosperity encouraged improvements in maritime trade, which in turn was a stimulus for the industrial revolution.

Nature is indifferent.

Lyssa wrote:

Nature is indifferent.

And yet those hippies with their humanist values still can't understand the message which is spoken here, as I can observe from the comment section. Nature does not care about you, you can pollute her and radiate the earth's surface with exploded nuclear facilities - Nature will go on nonetheless. People start to write that ''We are not above Nature'', but they don't dare to say 'We are apart of Nature, we are subjugated to Natural laws,' which means that your ''human rights'' are an artificial construct and your Utopian Ideals of (increasing) Uniformity, Egalitarian anti-Nature legislations, are merely codes of conduct which will destroy those human breeds, in particulary the European peoples, who deny the laws of Nature: The existence of inequality, the existence of racial differences in not only pigment but also in intellect, tribal instinct and the repulsion for the 'sick', sick not like a flue or disease with a cure, but those in genes and general malformations, such as those with Down Syndrome. Nature despises weakness and ''equality''. To ''evolve'' is in this context mentally, merely to acknowledge Nature in all its truths; which might hurt your humanist values and beliefs such as ''racial and gender equality''.


''There is no afterlife, so your conduct does not matter. Merely the child of local custom, morality is relative to culture and geography, and therefore fictive. Nature is our only ethical guide; humans are no more significant to Nature than insects. And since Nature uses matter from dead life forms to create new ones, crime, destruction, and death are necessary and pleasing to her. Therefore murder is good, and the mass murderer is the highest human type.'' ~Marquis de Sade

The monkey's trust in the mother is not dependent on how effectively she would actually protect him. Instinct simply made the first reliable source of comfort the one it went to for protection. Similar to what Satyr had said about the stripping of nature/history from people and them seeking warmth in whatever miniscule amount of order/comfort they're permitted (such as a state). Order is a distinction contra disorder. Comfortable things which "give way" to our actions (big pillows, beds, fur of the mother) provide a contrast to ourselves. A sense of power comes from feeling soft and tender things - you can feel your own bones, like in a hug, providing resistance. Likewise, with the state, those which we can affect (vote) we feel safer within, as it provides us opportunity for experiencing our own power. [Reducing distinction is a way to open up social interaction where previously there was only a fight/flight response. If we familiarize ourselves with an-other then when the other is upset or wronged, we can approach with compassion and regret, to "make it up" to them. This is the epitome of what an entitled person wishes were true - that their offense alone causes you to bend for them.]

The mother is always calm and unmoving, so in this sterile environment, it is safe to be curious and "fun-loving". To the chimp, if the mother were threatened herself, she would be animated. The lack of animation and noise from the mother makes the monkey confident the surroundings are safe. You can see, without the comfort of a confident mother, the chimp was paralyzed with fear, clinging onto the closest thing which provided it the most comfort despite the situation.

Using the previous example of order/disorder, an empty room is untested. How much will the environment bend to the chimp and how much won't? The chimp looks for something soft and risks it, running to it - unsure if it will pay off. It is surrounded by unknown and possibly unforgiving (dis)order.

Watch these grown apes repeat the behavior: they hug each other instead of a mother, looking for reassurance before they start exploring:


A grown and lone ape might take to fighting instead, their new strength enabling aggresssion by tossing everything around the room and trying to destroy the perceived threat. The void of a new room needs to be filled with the chimp's self - it needs to know it by it making it their own - leaving their mark, the equivalent of "marking" with felines. The marking is more a means of marking oneself than the object - a cat is affected by their own scent, identifying with it. A human can use noetic constructs which make the phenomenal object familiar with it - they may cling to a blanket as a young child, as an example - or retreat into their room, where the surroundings are most familiar. A state is a means of making a large area familiar and super-states attempt to accomplish the same. This is done usually through culture, law and ethics which normalize behaviors.

Out in the wild, the baby chimp with this situation would be easy predator food; clinging to its lifeless inanimate mother for protection, at least until the fear is too great. It would be interesting to test if it would abandon its mother if the threat got too close before it felt properly comforted. When it turned to confront the monster, it seems it only felt confident in doing so because the mother had "confidence".

I'd have also like to have seen whether the chimp paralyzed with fear would eventually warm up to the place and experiment - perhaps after perceiving no real movement. That may also depend on cognitive capacity for memory, to process the whole room. When the chimp looks one way, it may experience it's fear as if it were a ghost, where there may be some sly predator continually escaping it's view, so it would never actually have confidence enough to take the risks necessary to test the safety of the environment.

The mother was the only thing which the baby chimp "knew", by having the distinction of its soft body, it could feel itself exercise some control over itself. The wire mother pressed into its body and provided only an offense to the baby chimp's orderly body, the wire mesh resisting any imposition by the chimp. Air/open space by itself provides little to no resistance, so it would provide no comfort either. An open space has no order to manipulate, direct or to use as a shield. It may, in fact, be a sense of ripping away and siphoning order from the organism as it becomes directionless (no focus, restriction, no order) and so it ceases to exist through a gradual eating away by oxidation and entropy contra the giving way by means of a superior order squashing it. (Though, this seems eerily familiar to proposing that there is an order behind entropy which slowly eats away at all things which we consider order. Which would be the same as suggesting there's a hidden cause/God.)