Get you up to speed: Uganda observes first-ever civil war among Ngogo chimpanzee group

Chimp ‘civil war’ breaks out between 200 great apes | News World

Two adult male members of the Ngogo chimpanzee group at Kibale National Park in Uganda (Picture: Reuters)

Yet another war has broken out in the world – but this time among monkeys.

Scientists have observed the first-ever ‘chimp civil war’ in the world’s largest group of Ngogo chimpanzees.

A pack of 200 great apes lived in harmony in Uganda’s Kibale National Park for decades until their social bonds began to break down in 2015.

In June that year, some of the Ngogo chimps chased away their mates, causing the community to split into the Central and Western groups.

Still, the rival groups had Romeo and Juliet-style relationships and shared land and resources, according to a study published today in Science.

But by 2018, the last of the friendships ended, and the apes began patrolling their homes and even carrying out raids into enemy territory.

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Chimpanzees are one of our closest relatives (Picture: Getty Images/Gallo Images ROOTS)

Over the next four years, Western males killed seven males and 17 infants from the Central group.

A further 14 adolescent chimps, who had shown no sign of illness, disappeared; their bodies were never recovered.

The study’s lead author, Aaron Sandel, a primatologist at the University of Texas, said more deadly attacks were seen after the study ended in 2024.

‘Nothing like this has ever been observed before,’ Sandel said. ‘[Ngogo] is the first time that you could say definitively that the civil war is actually happening.’

Why the larger community broke down is unclear, but Sandel suspects that as their population swelled in numbers, the social order broke down.

Competition over food and the death and resulting succession of alpha males may have also been a factor, the paper says.

Chimps have long been observed exhibiting human-like behaviours, like tool-making (Picture: Getty Images/imageBROKER RF)

Chimpanzees are humankind’s closest living ancestors, having been seen making tools, falling in love, grieving and becoming violent.

These complex behaviours are passed from generation to generation and chimps even have ‘culminative cultures’, something only seen in people.

Many animals form cultures, where they learn something from another, but chimps have been seen innovating what they learn from others over time.

One reason, experts believe, is that chimps mingle so much, allowing for social learning. Chimp communities very rarely fracture, only doing so every 500 years.

Sandel hopes the team’s findings help people understand not only why we wage wars against one another but also how we can live in peace.

‘What we have to do is maintain interpersonal relationships,’ he says.

‘In our own daily lives with the people that we interact with, if we can reunite – even in the face of conflict – then I think that’s a recipe for maintaining peace.’

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