Войны у приматов (не у людей)

Vale> Из мультфильма инфу взял?

Some twenty years before our trip into central Zaire, during the early afternoon of January 7, 1974, in Gombe National Park, Tanzania, a group of eight chimpanzees traveled purposefully southward, toward the border of their range. They were a good fighting party: seven males, six of them adults, one an adolescent. The alpha male, Figan, was there. So was his rival, Humphrey. The only female with them was Gigi. Childless and tough, she wouldn't slow them down.

As they walked, they heard beyond them calls from the neighboring community, but they didn't shout or scream in reply. Instead they maintained an unusual silence and quickened their pace. They reached their border zone, but they didn't stop. Soon they were beyond their normal range, moving very quietly into the neighbors' territory. Breathlessly keeping pace with them was Hillali Matama, the senior field assistant from Jane Goodall's research center in Gombe.

Just inside the neighboring territory, Godi ate peacefully, alone in a tree. Godi was an ordinary male: a young adult about twenty-one years old and a member of the Kahama chimpanzee community. There were six other males in Kahama, and those earlier calls had told him where some of his comrades were. Often they all traveled together. But today Godi had chosen to eat alone. A mistake.

By the time he saw the eight intruders they were already at his tree. He leapt and ran, but his pursuers raced after him, the front three side by side. Humphrey got to him first, grabbing a leg. Godi, unbalanced, toppled at once. Humphrey jumped on him. Leaning with his full weight of so kilograms, pinning his opponent like a wrestler, holding down two of his limbs, Humphrey immobilized him. Godi lay helpless, his face crushed into the dirt.

While Humphrey held, the other males attacked. They were hugely excited, screaming and charging. Hugo, the eldest, hit Godi with teeth worn almost to the gums. The other adult males pummeled his shoulder blades and back. The adolescent watched from a distance. The female, Gigi, screamed and circled around the attack. (Imagine being battered by five heavyweight boxers and you have an idea of how Godi may have felt. Measured tests have demonstrated that even poorly conditioned captive chimpanzees are four to five times as strong as a human athlete in top condition.)

After ten minutes Humphrey let go of Godi's legs. The others stopped hitting him. Godi lay face down in the mud while a great rock was hurled toward him. Then, still wild with excitement, the attackers hurried deeper into the Kahama territory, hooting and charging. After a few minutes they returned to the north and back across the border into their own range. And Godi, slowly raising himself, screaming with fear and anguish, watched his tormentors go. There were appalling wounds on his face, body, and limbs. He was heavily bruised. He bled from dozens of gashes, cuts, and punctures.

He was never seen again. He may have lived on for a few days, perhaps a week or two. But he surely died.

 

Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) have hostile intergroup relations throughout most or all of their geographic range. Hostilities include aggressive encounters between members of neighboring communities during foraging and during patrols in which members of one community search for neighbors near territory boundaries. Attacks on neighbors involve coalitions of adult males, and are sometimes fatal. Targets include members of all age/sex classes, but the risk of lethal intergroup coalitionary aggression is highest for adult males and infants, and lowest for sexually swollen females.