A Massive Chimp Community Collapsed Into Civil War, and the Details Are Horrifying
A community of chimpanzees in Kibale National Park essentially functioned as a microcosm of a stable human society. They shared their space, groomed each other, and maintained alliances that forged a cooperative bond, strengthening their community. And then, in 2015, this great chimp society came crumbling down, with researchers describing it as something akin to a gruesome and brutally violent civil war. The Ngogo chimpanzee group split into two factions—Western and Central. The researchers, who published their findings in the journal Science , aren’t exactly sure what sparked the dramatic split. They know that at first it just looked like a minor social drift. But by 2018, that escalated into lethal violence. At least 28 chimps have been killed, including 19 infants. The attacks seem coordinated and targeted, often with displays of gruesome, stomach-churning violence. The Western group was the smaller of the two, but in time gained dominance. Its population numbers grew as it syst...
