The world's largest known group of wild chimpanzees has split and been locked in a vicious civil war for the last eight years, according to researchers.
It is not clear exactly why the once close-knit community of Ngogo chimpanzees at Uganda's Kibale National Park are at loggerheads, but since 2018 the scientists have recorded 24 killings, including 17 infants.
These were chimps that would hold hands, lead author Aaron Sandel said. Now they're trying to kill each other. The study, published in the journal Science, says the intensity and duration of the violence may inform how early human conflict developed.
Sandel, an anthropologist from the University of Texas in the US, and co-director of the Ngogo Chimpanzee Project, says chimpanzees are very territorial, and have hostile interactions with those from other groups. [It's] like a fear of strangers, he told the Science podcast.
While the nearly 200 Ngogo chimpanzees had lived in harmony for several decades, things began to change in June 2015 when the Western chimpanzees ran away from a confrontation and were chased by the Central group. This polarized the chimpanzees, causing significant friction between the formerly cohesive groups.
The aggression only intensified with subsequent events including the deaths of key individuals and a respiratory epidemic that decimated their population. Strong territoriality and scarce resources have been suggested as potential contributors to the escalation of these violent conflicts.
“Individuals who lived, fed, groomed and patrolled together for years became targets of lethal attacks based on their new group membership,” the researchers noted. The study highlights the parallel dynamics that may be present in human conflicts, suggesting that relational dynamics could outweigh constructs of politics or ethnicity in the genesis of conflicts.
