Now a study shows that this behavior is a result of natural selection. Violence has simply paid off.
The conclusion is somewhat controversial because many believed that the chimpanzee warfare has been the result of human interference and influence. Undisturbed chimpanzees would, in other words, behave peacefully.
But this is wishful thinking, claim the researchers behind the new study. Their analysis, published in Nature, is based on an extensive review of lethal violence among chimpanzees in 18 fields of study in Africa.
The researchers, led by evolutionary biologist Michael Wilson and Richard Wrangham, found evidence of 152 cases in which chimpanzees killed by conspecifics. Lethal violence were proven in 15 of the 18 study areas.
Almost always the males that account for the killing, and the victims are in three quarters of cases, also males.
It is normal for a coalition of males from one group and silently over the border into another group’s territory where they seek out lonely individuals as they throw themselves over and hits and bites to death. The similarity with the type of warfare that occurs in human hunter-gatherers are striking.
In this way, a group completely wipe out another. The gains are potentially large in terms of territory and greater access to more females.
The behavior is also, according to the researchers’ analysis, the same in chimpanzees from undisturbed areas and chimps from areas of human disturbance or where the animals are fed to the could more easily studied.
The conclusion is that warfare is a normal behavior among chimpanzees, and the result of natural selection. Deadly violence has paid off during the course of evolution.
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