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Chimp 'civil war' turns deadly in Uganda
Researchers say the western group has killed repeatedly and pushed the central group east as the conflict continues.
- On Friday, researchers reported that the Ngogo chimpanzees in Uganda's Kibale National Park have fractured into rival factions, with the conflict killing seven adult males and 17 infants across 10 miles of territory.
- Kevin Langergraber, an Arizona State University professor who studied the group for more than 20 years, attributed the split to the community growing too large to remain cohesive. Social polarization began in 2015.
- Jacob Negrey, involved with the Ngogo Chimpanzee Project for 13 years, said the violence is largely one-sided, with Western Ngogo chimpanzees systematically pushing The Central Ngogo group eastward across the territory.
- Describing attack tactics, Negrey said attackers "hold them down and bite them and stomp on them." Males "almost invariably, get their testicles ripped off," leading to death from bleeding or internal injuries.
- Scientists, including Aaron Sandel, are studying the conflict to understand biological drivers of violence, potentially challenging assumptions that human civil wars stem primarily from cultural or identity differences.
15 Articles
15 Articles
Chimp ‘civil war’ follows rare community split in a Ugandan national park
A chimpanzee community in Uganda’s Kibale National Park that split into rival factions later attacked former allies in what researchers are describing as a rare chimpanzee “civil war.” The new study, published in the journal Science, draws on nearly three decades of observations at the Ngogo chimpanzee research site, led by primatologist Aaron A. Sandel of the University of Texas at Austin, in the U.S. He and his colleagues say this is a rare ev…
The rare phenomenon has led to the division of the largest community in the world, in Uganda (ANSA)
Chimpanzees are more aggressive than bonobos, both of which are humans' closest living relatives.
Among Strauss' scrambled books and chords, Alberto Apparici opens this week the door to his library to address an uncomfortable and fascinating topic: organized chimpanzee violence. Starting with Jane Goodall's account of the Gombe War, the program connects that finding with a recent research published in Science that documents a new conflict in Uganda, where a community of more than 200 individuals has fractured into two opposing factions, with…
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