A study 30 years in the making, published last week in Science, announced an explosive finding: The largest known group of wild chimpanzees, located in Uganda’s Kibale National Park, is locked in a bloody civil war. The study’s authors said this might be the first “rare fission of a wild chimpanzee group and subsequent lethal aggression against former group members” in 500 years. At least 24 chimpanzees have been killed out of a total of about 200.
I asked evolutionary biologist Colin Wright to explain what turned these Ngogo chimpanzees against each other, whether their civil war can be stopped, and what it tells us about humans.
Wright isn’t one of the article’s authors, but he has studied various animal species and their social dynamics and community ecology. He is also founding editor of Reality’s Last Stand, an online publication about free speech, science, and reality, and a fellow at the Manhattan Institute. His responses have been lightly edited for clarity and length.
Tanner Nau: What’s going on with the chimpanzees? Why are they waging war on each other?
