On April 9, local time, a team led by primatologist Aaron Sandel published an article in Science magazine, recording the story of the split of the Ngogo gang, a gorilla group in Kibale National Park, Uganda.
This is the first time in human history that an organized "civil war" in a wild gorilla group has been completely recorded. Sylvain Lemoyne, professor of biological anthropology at the University of Cambridge, believes that this observation is also full of enlightenment for human society.
The direct cause of the recent civil war: several old chimpanzees who could contact the two sub-groups fell ill and died one after another in 2014. In 2015, an alpha male chimpanzee seized power, and then the bloody civil war began!
The group under study is the Ngogo gang, known from the Netflix documentary "Empire of the Gorillas" and whose members once numbered more than 200. From 1995 to 2015, the group worked together to defend its territory. In 2015, scientists observed a rift emerging—the Western Group and the Central Group began to avoid each other. Aaron Sandel, a primatologist at the University of Texas at Austin and lead author of the study, recalled that when members of the western group and the central group met, the chimpanzees in the western group ran away and the central group chased them. By 2018, the split was finally complete, with the two groups occupying different territories, former family members becoming neighbors, and relations becoming increasingly tense.
The level of violence following partition was far greater than expected. Between 2018 and 2024, the smaller western group launched at least 24 coordinated and organized attacks on the central group, clearly targeting adult males and cubs. The western group killed at least 7 adult males and 17 cubs in the central group. Another 14 adult males were missing and presumed dead. The attacks are extremely brutal: biting, punching, dragging and kicking the victim.
The antagonism between a father and his son is lamentable - the father "Garrison" is a core member of the Western Group, and the son "Peterson" is a senior leader of the Central Group. In the end, the son disappeared and was presumed to have been killed. John Mitani, senior author of the study and professor emeritus at the University of Michigan, said that the males of the two groups grew up together and had cooperated and benefited from each other. It was difficult to understand how yesterday's friends became today's enemies.
This research provides a new perspective on understanding the origins of conflict in human societies. The dominant view has long been that war is rooted in racial, religious or cultural differences. However, chimpanzees do not have these unique human markings, but they can still wage deadly wars over group identity.
Professor Sandel points out that the sheer dynamics of social relationships are enough to drive polarization and deadly conflict. The research team believes that this finding challenges current models to explain collective violence in humans, suggesting that the breakdown of interpersonal relationships may be a deeper source of conflict.
Sandel said that this is unsettling, but in a way it is closer to the human condition - why do we have this contradiction in our hearts: we can be highly cooperative, but can turn against each other in a very short period of time?