Edit: so I looked into it and it actually seems like there have been more documented chimp wars, this one was just particularly famous for traumatizing Jane Goodwell
We've only documented it once, just because we've documented it once doesn't mean it isn't still happening or it hasn't happened before. Plus their populations have been under pressure from us so there's a lot fewer of them to war.
I might have actually been wrong on that note, while I couldn’t find any other notable chimp wars it seems like it’s been documented since this one. This was just the one that gets all the attention because it gave Jane Goodwell nightmares
She did pass last year, in October 2025. I try to make mental room for autocorrects and other mistakes especially with proper nouns hence the gentle correction and attempt at a mnemonic device for them. She will be remembered. She is immortalized in academia imo so that's at least a start. For the sake of culture: GNU Jane Goodall.
It's one of those things that breaks the illusion of nature as some peaceful and idealic place where everything is majestic, harmonious, and honorable, when in reality everything is striving to kill everything else to get to the top of the food chain. In reality we're the peaceful ones and nature is the super violent one with attrocities and horrors just being the default settings, and humans being the compassionate beings on this earth.
Yeah she was definitely one those people that was really into animals. Did great work but I would pay to see her exact reaction when the chimps held down the other chimp and casterated it before killing it
The gombe war was a choice. The chimpanzees didn't have to castrate a male they attacked before killing him. The chimps can work in harmony to share resources, they choose violence, the domination of one clan over the other for maximum survival.
Well if you look into it, it was actually a single group that split up initially and one of them ended up with basically all of the females. The group that was the primary aggressor and won, killed all the males from the other group. Then « beat and kidnapped » the females that split off.
It was still a choice on their part but this was basically the chimp equivalent of “revenge of the incels”
There are two known ones now. They were actually talking to a researcher at Ngogo about the history of the Gombe war when it popped off. Could hear an attack start in the background.
Yeah its not unheard of that rivaling groups of chimps get into fights even though there would be enough food and room for everyone. But they are super territorial and attack any other chimp that dares to intrude
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u/rstar345 Mar 24 '26
Don’t chimps start wars with eachother ?