The largest group of wild chimpanzees known to scientists has permanently split in two. In a study published in Science, researchers from the University of Texas at Austin and other institutions report the first clearly documented permanent fission in wild chimpanzees and the sustained intergroup violence that followed.
  • Lvxferre [he/him]@mander.xyz
    10·
    7 hours ago

    The only previously reported case took place in the 1970s at Gombe, Tanzania, during Jane Goodall’s long-term study.

    I was reading about it (the Four Years War) rather recently; it was really nasty, seven of the adult males died in it. (All from the Kahama clan, and one from Kasakela.) Granted, this might not look like a big deal, but the community had 14 adult males, half of them died in the war.

    I also found further info on the Ngogo community here. 32 adult males, 50 adult females, 166 members in total in 2011. That’s fucking huge.

    “What’s especially striking is that the chimpanzees are killing former group members,” says Aaron Sandel, associate professor of anthropology at UT Austin and the study’s lead author. “The new group identities are overriding cooperative relationships that had existed for years.”

    It’s the same with us humans, too: gaining trust takes years, but losing it takes a few seconds. As soon as you’re identified with “the enemy”, you already lost that trust, and things only spiral down.

    “If relational dynamics alone can drive polarization and lethal conflict in chimps without language, ethnicity, or ideology, then in humans, those cultural markers might be secondary to something more basic,” says Sandel.

    I admit I don’t know enough about chimps to say anything concrete, but what Aaron Sandel is saying sounds sensible. Multilingual communities are often stable and can last centuries; but once there’s “something” missing, usually in the material conditions, you see war. I believe this applies to the rest of culture, too.