The Gombe Chimpanzee War, also known as the Four-Year War,[3][4] was a violent conflict between two communities of chimpanzees in Gombe Stream National Park in the Kigoma region of Tanzania between 1974 and 1978. The two groups were once unified in the Kasakela community. By 1974, researcher Jane Goodall noticed the community splintering.[5] Over a span of eight months, a large party of chimpanzees separated themselves into the southern area of Kasakela and were renamed the Kahama community. The separatists consisted of six adult males, three adult females and their young.[5] The Kasakela was left with eight adult males, twelve adult females and their young.
During the four-year conflict, all males of the Kahama community were killed, effectively disbanding the community. The victorious Kasakela then expanded into further territory but were later repelled by two other communities of chimpanzees.
Background
Feeding station where Goodall would feed the Gombe chimpanzees
Prior to the four-year war, before it became a national park, Gombe Stream National Park was known as the Gombe Stream Research Centre.[6] The park is located in the lower region of the Kakombe Valley,[6] and is known for its primate research opportunities first taken advantage of by researcher Jane Goodall, who served as the director of the Gombe Stream Research Centre.[6] The site itself is composed of steep slopes of open woodland, rising above stream valleys lush with riverine forest.[7]
The chimpanzees roamed across these hills in territorial communities, which divided the chimpanzees into parties ranging from one to 40 members.[7] The term Kasakela[6] refers to one of three areas of research in the central valley with the Kasakela in the north, the Kakombe, and the Mkenke to the south.[6] Evidence of territorialism was first documented once Goodall followed the chimpanzees in their feeding situations, noting their aggressive territorial behavior.[8][9] Chimpanzee males would patrol their territories and occasionally raid into the areas of other communities. However, violence during these patrols usually occurred in the form of attacks on isolated females and infants; the male patrols would mostly avoid each other or, if they met in equal numbers, limit themselves to noisy shows of force instead of seeking battle.[10] Accordingly, Goodall did not foresee the upcoming full-scale conflict between the two communities in Gombe.[4]
The conflict began to emerge during the end of the tenure of Kasakela's long-term alpha, Mike. At this point, there were 14 adult males in the Kasakela community, and six of them increasingly spent time in the community's southern territory. Goodall and her colleagues began to refer to this section as the "southern sub-group", while the much more numerous remainder of the Kasakela was termed the "northern sub-group".[11] Over several months, the males of the two sub-groups reacted with increasing hostility toward each other. The northerners initially avoided the southerners' areas,[12] whereas the southern males, led by the brothers Hugh and Charlie,[13] made forays into northern territory. The brothers were described as "fearless" by Goodall, and the northern males generally avoided confronting them. Despite the growing tensions, some peaceful contacts between the sub-groups were maintained by two older northern males, Mike and Rodolf, with a southern male, Goliath.[12]
Two years after the sub-groups' emergence, the factions had developed into fully separate communities. The northern faction was now considered the Kasakela community, whereas the southern faction was termed the "Kahama community". At this point, the Kahama had given up the northernmost border areas of their range to the Kasakela, but the separatists still controlled an area where the Kasakela had previously "roamed at will". At this point, the two communities' patrols would make shows of force when encountering each other, though there was no open fighting. This situation continued for about a year.[12] By 1974, the Kahama were still led by Hugh and Charlie, with the other males being Godi, De, Goliath, and the young Sniff. The Kasakela males included Satan, Sherry, Evered, Rodolf, Jomeo, Mike, Humphrey, and Figan,[14] who had risen to be the dominant male.[15]
War
First blood was drawn by the Kasakela community on January 7, 1974,[16] when a party of six adult Kasakela males consisting of Humphrey, Figan, Jomeo, Sherry, Evered, and Rodolf ambushed the isolated Kahama male Godi while he was feeding on a tree.[12] The Kasakela males were accompanied by one female, Gigi, who "charged back and forth around the melee".[1] Despite Godi's attempt to flee, the attackers seized him, threw him on the ground and beat him until he stopped moving.[1] Afterwards, the victorious chimpanzees celebrated boisterously, throwing and dragging branches with hoots and screams, and retreated.[1] Once the Kasakela group had left, Godi stood up again, but probably died of his injuries soon after.[1] This was the first time that any of the chimpanzees had been seen to deliberately attempt to kill a fellow male chimpanzee.[16]
After Godi fell, the Kasakela ambushed and maimed De. In the attack on De, the female Gigi actually took part in combat alongside the Kasakela males.[1] Just as in Godi's case, De was badly wounded in the assault and probably died soon after the clash.[1] The third Kahama victim was the elderly Goliath. Throughout the leadup to the war and its initial stage, Goliath had been relatively friendly with the Kasakela neighbors when encounters occurred.[17] However, his kindness was no longer reciprocated when a Kasakela patrol consisting of Figan, Faben, Humphrey, Satan, and Jomeo ambushed him. The researcher who observed this attack was shocked by the brutality and fury displayed by the Kasakela group, with Faben twisting Goliath's leg in a way as if he was trying to dismember it. The elderly chimpanzee probably died soon after the attack. Around this point, Hugh also vanished, with Goodall assuming that he too had been killed by the Kasakela. This left only three Kahama males: Charlie, Sniff, and Willy Wally, who was crippled from polio.[18] In 1975, Faben disappeared despite previously appearing healthy; Goodall suspected that he had been killed, though anthropologistR. Brian Ferguson cautioned that the disappearance of chimpanzee males was not unusual even in peaceful times.[19]
Charlie was the next victim among the Kahama. His death was not directly observed by the researchers, but fishermen reported hearing "sounds of fierce conflict"; three days later, his corpse was found with "terrible injuries" at the Kahama Stream.[20] Next, the Kasakela chimpanzees attacked an elderly Kahama female, Madam Bee; she died of her wounds four days later.[21] After Charlie's death, Willy Wally disappeared and was never found. The last remaining Kahama male, the young Sniff, survived for over a year. For some time it seemed as if he might escape into a new community or be welcomed back to the Kasakelas, but this did not occur. Sniff, too, fell to the Kasakela war band.[22] Of the females from Kahama, one was killed, two went missing, and three were beaten and kidnapped by the Kasakela males.[23] Conversely, Ferguson argued that at least some of the missing Kahama may had survived the war by fleeing outside the Gombe area; it was documented that the Kahama community had friendly contacts to a largely unknown chimpanzee community to the east who could have accepted them into their ranks.[19]
The Kasakela thus succeeded in taking over the Kahama's former territory,[23] and spent the time after their victory moving through this area and feasting on its food sources. Temporarily, the community's territory increased from 12 to over 15 square kilometres (5.8sqmi).[24]
Aftermath
These territorial gains were not permanent, however. With the Kahama gone, the Kasakela territory now butted up directly against the territory of another chimpanzee community, called the Kalande.[25] Goodall reasoned that the Kahama had functioned as a "buffer", and the Kalande now began expanding northward into Kasakela areas.[24] Cowed by the superior strength and numbers of the Kalande, as well as a few violent skirmishes along their border, the Kasakela quickly gave up much of their new territory. They also lost at least two males, Humphrey and Sherry; presumably the two were killed by Kalande.[26] Furthermore, when the Kasakela group moved back northward, they were harassed by foragers belonging to the Mitumba chimpanzee community, who also outnumbered the Kasakela community. Beset from north and south, the Kasakela territory shrunk to 5 square kilometres (1.9sqmi) by 1981, an area barely able to feed the community's members.[27]
In 1982, Kalande and Mitumba males invaded the Kasakela core area, and actually began to interact with each other. The Kasakela community's complete collapse was averted, however, as there was an unusual number of male young growing up in the community at the time. Though they were neither strong nor experienced enough to actually fight the Kalande and Mitumba, the Kasakela's young males could make noisy displays alongside the older males. This made it appear as if the Kasakela community was stronger than it actually was; this allowed the Kasakela to regain territory. Eventually, hostilities died down and the regular order of things was restored.[28]
According to Ferguson, it is possible that the Gombe Chimpanzee War contributed to transgenerational violence, specifically in the case of Frodo, a later alpha male of the Kasakela chimpanzees who was known for his exceptional aggression. Frodo was born in early 1976 and spent his first years experiencing the Four-Year War and a simultaneous "infanticide streak" by two Kasakela females.[29] As a teenager, he personally witnessed the violent overthrow and mass beating of an alpha male, Goblin.[30] Ferguson further pointed out that "almost all" of the "severe" violent attacks by Kasakela males on other chimpanzee communities over the next decades were carried out by eight males (including Frodo) who had been born between 1971 and 1979.[31]
Jane Goodall is known for her research on chimpanzees.[32] The outbreak of the war shocked her,[4] as she had previously considered chimpanzees to be, although similar to human beings, "rather 'nicer'".[27] Coupled with her 1975 observation of cannibalistic infanticide by a high-ranking female in the community, the Gombe war revealed the "dark side" of chimpanzee behavior.[27] In her 1990 memoir Through a Window: My Thirty Years with the Chimpanzees of Gombe, she wrote:
For several years I struggled to come to terms with this new knowledge. Often when I woke in the night, horrific pictures sprang unbidden to my mind—Satan [one of the apes], cupping his hand below Sniff's chin to drink the blood that welled from a great wound on his face; old Rodolf, usually so benign, standing upright to hurl a four-pound rock at Godi's prostrate body; Jomeo tearing a strip of skin from Dé's thigh; Figan, charging and hitting, again and again, the stricken, quivering body of Goliath, one of his childhood heroes.[24]
Legacy
When Goodall reported on the events of the Gombe War, her account of a naturally occurring war between chimpanzees was not universally believed. At the time, scientific models of human and animal behavior virtually never overlapped.[33] Some scientists accused her of excessive anthropomorphism;[33] others suggested that her presence, and her practice of feeding the chimpanzees, had created violent conflict in a naturally peaceful society.[34] However, later research using less intrusive methods confirmed that chimpanzee societies, in their natural state, indeed wage war.[34][35] A 2018 study published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology concluded that the Gombe War was most likely a consequence of a power struggle between three high-ranking males, which was exacerbated by an unusual scarcity of fertile females.[36] Conversely, some research has suggested that the extent of the Gombe Chimpanzee War may have been smaller than initially reported: For instance, a leopard had been active in Gombe at the time of the war, and Ferguson argued that some of the missing chimpanzees may have been killed by this animal instead of by other chimpanzees.[19] Furthermore, later research revealed that violence was generally more common within chimpanzee communities than between different chimpanzee groups.[37]
In literature, the chimpanzee war became the topic of a philosophical poem "The First Civil War in Gombe 1974–1978" by Katarzyna Zechenter, a Polish poet, where the speaking persona concludes: "Still, I don’t understand, were these chimps so human, or are we such animals?"[38]
The chimpanzee, also simply known as the chimp, is a species of great ape native to the forests and savannahs of tropical Africa. It has four confirmed subspecies and a fifth proposed one. When its close relative the bonobo was more commonly known as the pygmy chimpanzee, this species was often called the common chimpanzee or the robust chimpanzee. The chimpanzee and the bonobo are the only species in the genus Pan. Evidence from fossils and DNA sequencing shows that Pan is a sister taxon to the human lineage and is thus humans' closest living relative.
Dame Jane Morris Goodall, formerly Baroness Jane van Lawick-Goodall, is an English zoologist, primatologist and anthropologist. She is considered the world's foremost expert on chimpanzees, after 60 years' studying the social and family interactions of wild chimpanzees. Goodall first went to Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania to observe its chimpanzees in 1960.
The genus Pan consists of two extant species: the chimpanzee and the bonobo. Taxonomically, these two ape species are collectively termed panins. The two species were formerly collectively called "chimpanzees" or "chimps"; if bonobos were recognized as a separate group at all, they were referred to as "pygmy" or "gracile chimpanzees". Together with humans, gorillas, and orangutans they are part of the family Hominidae. Native to sub-Saharan Africa, chimpanzees and bonobos are currently both found in the Congo jungle, while only the chimpanzee is also found further north in West Africa. Both species are listed as endangered on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, and in 2017 the Convention on Migratory Species selected the chimpanzee for special protection.
Washoe was a female common chimpanzee who was the first non-human to learn to communicate using signs adapted from American Sign Language (ASL) as part of an animal research experiment on animal language acquisition.
Gombe Stream National Park is a national park in Kigoma District of Kigoma Region in Tanzania, 16 km (10 mi) north of Kigoma, the capital of Kigoma Region. Established in 1968, it is one of the smallest national parks in Tanzania, with only 35 km2 (13.5 sq mi) of protected land along the hills of the eastern shore of Lake Tanganyika. The terrain is distinguished by steep valleys, and the vegetation ranges from grassland to woodland to tropical rainforest. Accessible only by boat, the park is most famous as the location where Jane Goodall pioneered her behavioural research on the common chimpanzee populations. The Kasakela chimpanzee community, featured in several books and documentaries, lives in Gombe National Park.
Richard Walter Wrangham is an English]] anthropologist and primatologist; he is Professor of Biological Anthropology at Harvard University. His research and writing have involved ape behavior, human evolution, violence, and cooking.
Red colobuses are Old World monkeys of the genus Piliocolobus. It was formerly considered a subgenus within the genus Procolobus, which is now restricted to the olive colobus. They are closely related to the black-and-white colobus monkeys, and some species are often found in groups with the blue monkey. The western red colobus is frequently hunted by the common chimpanzee.
Hugo Arndt Rodolf, Baron van Lawick was a Dutch wildlife filmmaker and photographer.
The Trimates, sometimes called Leakey's Angels, is a name given to three women — Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and Birutė Galdikas — chosen by anthropologist Louis Leakey to study primates in their natural environments. They studied chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans, respectively.
The Jane Goodall Institute (JGI) is a global non-profit wildlife and environment conservation organization headquartered in Washington, DC. It was founded in 1977 by English primatologist Jane Goodall and Genevieve di San Faustino (1919-2011). The institute's mission is to improve the treatment and understanding of primates through public education and legal representation, to protect their habitats in partnership with local communities, and to recruit and train young people for these missions.
The Jane Goodall Institute (Hong Kong) (Chinese: 國際珍古德（香港）協會), founded in 2002, was established as a local registered charity involved in the promotion of the well-being of the community, animals and environment. The Jane Goodall Institute Hong Kong is one of the Asian branches of the Jane Goodall Institute which was founded in 1977 in California by Jane Goodall and Genevieve, Princess di San Faustino. With its headquarters in the US, the Jane Goodall Institute is a worldwide non-profit organization with 17 overseas offices.
The eastern chimpanzee is a subspecies of the common chimpanzee. It is native to the Central African Republic, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, and Tanzania.
Barbara Boardman Smuts is an American anthropologist and psychologist noted for her research into baboons, dolphins, and chimpanzees, and a Professor Emeritus at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
The Kasekela chimpanzee community is a habituated community of wild eastern chimpanzees that lives in Gombe National Park near Lake Tanganyika in Tanzania. The community was the subject of Jane Goodall's pioneering study that began in 1960, and studies have continued ever since, becoming the longest continuous study of any animals in their natural habitat. As a result, the community has been instrumental in the study of chimpanzees and has been popularized in several books and documentaries. The community's popularity was enhanced by Goodall's practice of giving names to the chimpanzees she was observing, in contrast to the typical scientific practice of identifying the subjects by number. Goodall generally used a naming convention in which infants were given names starting with the same letter as their mother, allowing the recognition of matrilineal lines.
The Mitumba chimpanzee community is a group of wild eastern chimpanzees that inhabit a 10-kilometre-square area of the Gombe Stream National Park, near Lake Tanganyika in Tanzania. This community borders the well-known Kasekela community of chimpanzees. The Mitumba community became well-known following the migration in 1996 of the female chimpanzee Flossi from the Kasekela community, becoming the first identified female chimpanzee to migrate from her natal group. In 2010 the community numbered 25 members. Mitumba males have occasionally been killed by males of the Kasekela community. The Mitumba community's range and size has declined since the 1970s largely as a result of competition with the Kasekela community and due to habitat destruction. Rivalry with Kasekela community in the 1990s and 2000s resulted in several Mitumba chimps being killed by Kasekela males, including the infants Rejea and Andromeda and most likely the adult male Rusambo. During this rivalry, Mitumba males killed the Kasekela adult female Patti.
Dale Peterson is an American author who writes about scientific and natural history subjects.
Toshisada Nishida was a Japanese primatologist who established one of the first long term chimpanzee field research sites. He was the first to discover that chimpanzees, instead of forming nuclear family-like arrangements, live a communal life with territorial boundaries. His discoveries of the medicinal use of plants by wild chimpanzees helped form the basis of the field of zoopharmacognosy.
Anne Elizabeth Pusey is director of the Jane Goodall Institute Research Center and a professor of evolutionary anthropology at Duke University. Since the early 1990s, Pusey has been archiving the data collected from the Gombe chimpanzee project. The collection housed at Duke University consists of a computerized database that Pusey oversees. In addition to archiving Jane Goodall’s research from Gombe, she is involved in field study and advising students at Gombe. She was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2022.
Jane is a 2017 American biographical documentary film directed and written by Brett Morgen about primatologist, ethologist, and anthropologist Jane Goodall.
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