![]() Splits are rare genetics suggests the groups can last for centuries ( Journal of Human Evolution, doi.org/smp).Ĭhimpanzee violence is rare, but it can be extreme in its brutality. Unfortunately, the Gombe war is the only known chimp group split, says Feldblum. “There must be some ecological reason why they have converged on the same pattern of social organisation. More clues might come from New World spider monkeys, the only other primate that seems to behave similarly, says Anthony Di Fiore at the University of Texas at Austin. That means chimp societies might help us understand how human-like societies evolve. Here, too, it was easy to predict how the group split. This social fragmentation resembles human societies, he says, pointing to “an iconic study in sociology”, Zachary’s karate club, which showed how tensions among members of the club led it to split into two. It was possible to predict which group a chimp joined by looking at their preferred social contacts before the split, says Feldblum. “Groups of males would slip into rebel territory and savagely beat a single chimp” Groups of males would slip into rebel territory and savagely beat a single chimp. Over four years Humphrey’s group destroyed the brothers’ group, and the seven rebel males died or vanished. The other chimps began to follow either Humphrey or the brothers. “He seems to have been a bridge between the northern and southern chimps.”Īfter Leakey’s death a chimp called Humphrey became alpha male, but he was weak and faced pressure from two brothers from the south, Hugh and Charlie. “As soon as Leakey died they started splitting,” says Feldblum. It’s hard to say what caused the split, but a senior male called Leakey died at the end of 1970. Feldblum presented the work at the American Association of Physical Anthropologists meeting in Calgary, Canada, last month. Then the chimps suddenly split into two groups – one based in the north, one in the south – that spent less time socialising with each other. The results suggest that the Gombe community was united until 1971. They did this for several periods between 19, revealing when the nature of the network changed. ![]() His team then plugged this data into software that can describe the chimps’ social network. ![]() But the notes are so detailed that Feldblum could get a better idea of each chimp’s social ties, for instance, by considering if the chimps arrived at the same time and from the same direction. In the past, researchers have estimated the strength of social ties based on the amount of time two chimps spent together at the station. Joseph Feldblum at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, and colleagues have re-examined Goodall’s field notes from the chimp feeding station she established at Gombe to work out what led to the conflict.
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