Chimpanzees in Uganda locked in vicious 'civil war', say researchers

The primary reason seems to be new alpha coming in and most of the older chimps that connected the two groups dying relatively close to each other.

Actually the war is just a distraction from the Epstein files. An orangutan started the war after his name appeared in the files 10k times.

A lot of animals are smart enough to be petty. Crows are really good about that. Humans are not as special as we think.

Well f***, give the mango back dude!

You create a common enemy. Kidnap one alpha from each, send in robots to torture both apes, let the chimps work together to free themselves, "kidnap" them again from their prison and send them home to tell the tale 🧠👈

Mostly because they hold a mirror up to us.

We are also fighting over territory and resources, what do you mean? It’s just more complex but still it’s exactly the same. We are just slaves of our nature to conquer and control. The only difference is; the monkeys don’t destroy the world while doing it

Nahh its still about tangible for us, we've just evolved past the point to admit that and now use clever excuses to convince others to fight for us/justify fighting to others

r/boneappletea

Those fairy “tells” and superstitions just a way to gain population approval. It always been resources.

Yes. We have in fact, become South Park

Nah those things are uncommon among humans

Nature is fking brutal, Anyone who thinks that Human are savage but animals are not are fking dumb and naive. Its just that Human's social let people do really creative fuked up thing.

wait how the f*** do ants fight proxy wars

Going off on a phrase that the original commenter never said is slightly confusing. Have you been in that debate a few times? I think the argument mentioned against humans is also incomplete. Humans do savage things, as other animals do. But humans have a brain that allows them to act differently. A non-zero-sum society is possible.

Ok but we do know exactly why the Hutus and the Tutsis hated each other and honestly the reason is similar to the Shia/Sunni dynamic… differences in culture that got exploited by colonizers and then they gave the minority groups more power directly over the majority groups and eventually the majority groups didn’t want that anymore. We can talk about specific inciting incidents and all… but it’s really quite explainable. Also having read the article people quoted in the comments above… it does seem like there’s some clues about what happened with the chimps. It’s not some complete mystery that we have to dismiss as having “no sense.” The scientists are working to make sense of it and they know more every day.

People are still talking about those?! /s

[removed]

[removed]

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. Wild chimpanzees filmed using forest 'first aid' 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. But over several decades, Sandel said the nearly 200 Ngogo chimpanzees had lived in harmony. There were divided into two sets - known to researchers as Western and Central - but they had existed overall as a cohesive group. Sandel said he first noticed them polarising in June 2015, when the Western chimpanzees ran away and were chased by the Central group. "Chimpanzees are sort of melodramatic," he said, explaining that following arguments there would ordinarily be "screaming and chasing" and then later, they would grooming and co-operating. But following the 2015 dispute, the researchers saw that there was a six-week avoidance period between the two sets, with interactions becoming more infrequent. When they did occur, Sandel said they were "a little more intense, a little more aggressive". Following the emergence of the two distinct groups in 2018, members of the Western group started attacking the Central chimpanzees. In 24 targeted attacks since the split, at least seven adult males and 17 infants from the Central chimps have been killed, the study found, although the researchers believe the actual number of deaths are higher. The researchers believe many factors such as the group size and subsequent competition of resources, and "male-male competition" for reproducing may be to blame. But they say there were three likely catalysts: The first, were the deaths of five adult males and one adult female - for reasons unknown - in 2014, which could have disrupted social networks and weakened social ties across the subgroups The following year, there was a change in the alpha male, which the study says coincided with the first period of separation between the Western and Central groups. "Changes in the dominance hierarchy can increase aggression and avoidance in chimpanzees," it explained The third factor was the deaths of 25 chimpanzees, including four adult males and 10 adult females, as a result of a respiratory epidemic, in 2017, a year before the final separation. One of the adult males who died was "among the last individuals to connect the groups", the research paper said. Sandel and his colleagues said their findings encourage people to rethink what they know of human conflict and warfare. "In the case of the Ngogo fission, individuals who lived, fed, groomed and patrolled together for years became targets of lethal attacks on the basis of their new group membership," they wrote in the paper. If chimpanzees - one of the species closest to humans genetically - could do so without human constructs of religion, ethnicity and political beliefs, then "relational dynamics may play a larger causal role in human conflict than often assumed", they added. James Brooks, a researcher at the German Primate Center in Germany, said it was a "reminder of the danger that group divisions can present to human societies". Commenting on the study in Science, he wrote: "Humans must learn from studying the group-based behaviour of other species, both in war and at peace, while remembering that their evolutionary past does not determine their future."

Oh thats weird. I was able to read the article, is it you only have a time limit on the article or how far you can scroll?

I just read it. It wasn't paywalled for me.

That’s weird. I’m in the U.S. and have never run into the paywall. This is news to me that the BBC now has a paywall for the U.S.

Clicked the link and there was no paywall.

What paywall?

[removed]

Excellent!  Thank you for finding and linking that!  Amazing.  Really like this guy and his content.  Well done!!!   And, yes, gorillas are often tender, nurturing, kind, protective and hilarious!

[removed]

[removed]

[removed]