It has not been known that Chimpanzees and gorillas are violent towards each other, and the two animals peacefully live together in certain regions so it's shocking and unfortunate that researchers have seen them in deadly fights for the first time.
Chimpanzee Vs. Gorilla
In 2019 two different encounters were witnessed in the Loango National Park in Gabon. On the two encounters, the chimpanzees were more than the gorillas and they started the attacks, and a young gorilla was killed both times.
In a new study recording the encounter, researchers hope to make clear what might have caused the strange aggression - whether it has to do with territorial combats, struggle for resources, or something else.
Tobias Deschner, a primatologist from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany said: "Our observations provide the first evidence that the presence of chimpanzees can have a lethal impact on gorillas."
Adding that they now want to carry out an investigation on the factors prompting these unusual aggressive interactions.
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The Encounter
18 chimpanzees and 5 gorillas - three adult females, one silverback, and one infant, were involved in the initial interaction in February 2019 and lasted 52 minutes. The chimps ran into the gorillas while coming back from an excursion into closeby territories.
27 chimpanzees - some among the first encounter, and seven gorillas - three adult females, one silverback, one young and two infants - were involved in the second interaction that happened in December 2019, this one lasted 79 minutes. Here, the chimps encountered the gorillas at the beginning of a territory border patrol.
In the two cases, the chimpanzees were able to split up a young gorilla from its mother and kill it - the chimps consumed the young gorilla in the second incident. The remaining gorillas ran away, while some chimpanzees got injured in the first clash fighting.
With these uncommon battles now on documentation, the question that follows is what could have led to it. The researchers believe that the chimpanzees may have taken the young gorillas as prey, or that they were struggling for food, or that the battles were over territory.
Interactions Between Chimps and Gorillas
Deschner said: "It could be that sharing of food resources by chimpanzees, gorillas, and forest elephants in the Loango National Park results in increased competition and sometimes even in lethal interactions between the two great ape species."
It is difficult to observe interactions between chimps and gorillas - because of the need to give them some space and respect, the uncommonness of gorilla populations, the large regions involved, the nature of the habitat and so on.
With that in the back of your mind, it's possible that killings between these two animals are truly more usual than the records show, but it is fascinating to remember that the deadly encounters took place during the time of the year when foods like fruit would have been limited.
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