Overview
- New peer-reviewed findings detail how the Ngogo chimpanzees in Uganda split into two camps that shifted from mutual avoidance to patrols and then to lethal attacks.
- The escalation began after a June 24, 2015 encounter that led to six weeks of avoidance, followed by patrols by western males in 2016 and by the central faction in 2017.
- By 2018 the community had split into a smaller western group of 10 males and 22 females and a larger central group of 30 males and 39 females, with every observed attack launched by the smaller faction.
- Documented outcomes through 2024 include seven adult male killings, 17 juvenile deaths starting in 2021, and additional disappearances from the central group.
- The authors link the violence to the community’s exceptional size, losses of key individuals during a 2017 epidemic that weakened cross-group ties, and rising anonymity, and they compare the case with Jane Goodall’s earlier but confounded observations.