Khaberni - A beautiful Ugandan forest turned into a bloody battlefield where two rival chimpanzee clans wage the first recorded "civil war" among primates.
Aaron Sandel, author of the study and an anthropologist at the University of Texas at Austin, told Live Science: "Chimpanzees from one of the groups began attacking and killing members of the other group, which escalated into a deadly violence period."
The study, published in the current April issue of Science, documents a dangerous escalation of violence within the "Ngogo" chimpanzee community, one of the largest and most famous gatherings of these primates in the world, which has been under scientific observation for more than three decades, according to the "New York Post".
Although the late researcher Jane Goodall observed similar divisions about half a century ago, what is happening now is considered the first detailed scientific documentation of an internal split developing to this level of violence as it occurs.
From cohesion to division
The "Ngogo" community, which consists of more than 200 individuals, appears relatively cohesive, despite the presence of internal factions, but between 1998 and 2014 signs of division began to appear, with the formation of distinct groups, including a small alliance of three males who later played a pivotal role.
By 2015, the community had officially split into two separate clans living and breeding independently, amid sharp changes in the hierarchy, believed to be linked to the death of several adult males who had played the role of "mediators" between the factions.
Struggle for influence
By 2018, relations completely collapsed, and direct confrontations between the two sides began, in a struggle for land and dominance, which quickly turned into organized attacks, resulting in the death of a number of adult males, before later targeting the young, in an unprecedented escalation.
According to researchers, repeated cases of killing and sometimes even eating infants were recorded, reflecting the most extreme levels of violence within the same species.
Despite the severity of what is happening, Sandel hesitates to use the term "civil war," explaining that the concept is associated with humans and states, but he acknowledges an important implication: "This is not a confrontation with strangers.. these are chimpanzees that knew each other well."
Conversely, James Brooks, a researcher in evolutionary anthropology, believes that using the term might be useful for understanding how internal divisions can lead to bloody violence, not just in the animal world, but also in human societies.
So far, the confrontations have not ceased, with recent attacks recorded this year, indicating that this open conflict may continue for a longer period, in one of the most worrying phenomena in the study of primate behavior.
