‘I didn’t want to write about this’: the man who first saw chimps waging civil war
John Mitani spent years studying a huge community of chimpanzees in Uganda. But then things took a dark turn – and his findings stunned the scientific world
TL;DR
- John Mitani spent decades studying a large chimpanzee community in Uganda's Ngogo research area.
- The Ngogo Chimpanzee Project documented a community of nearly 200 chimps, an unusually large number.
- Findings included evidence of strong alliances among unrelated males and the importance of hunting for social bonding.
- A "civil war" erupted among the chimps starting in 2015, leading to the deaths of nine males and 19 infants.
- This lethal aggression unexpectedly resulted in doubled female fertility and increased offspring survival.
- Mitani found the conflict personally difficult to witness and delayed publishing findings about it.
- He emphasizes that chimp behavior is not directly analogous to human evolution.
- Concerns are raised about the future funding of the Ngogo research project.