health
Wild chimpanzees recorded waging ‘civil war’ with coordinated attacks between two groups
New study describes what may be the first case of a unified community of chimps, in Uganda, turning on itself
TL;DR
- A study published in Science details a 'civil war' among the Ngogo chimpanzee group in Uganda's Kibale National Park.
- The once unified group permanently split into western and central factions between 2015 and 2018.
- The western group conducted 24 coordinated attacks on the central group, killing at least seven adult males and 17 infants.
- This is the first observed instance of lethal aggression between members of a once-cohesive wild chimpanzee community.
- Possible causes for the fracture include shifts in social hierarchies, the death of key older individuals, and a disease outbreak.
- The findings have implications for understanding human conflict and raise concerns for ape conservation, as human activities could increase the frequency of such inter-group conflicts.