{"id":376806,"date":"2026-04-13T04:04:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-13T04:04:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/376806\/"},"modified":"2026-04-13T04:04:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-13T04:04:08","slug":"even-the-chimps-are-going-to-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/376806\/","title":{"rendered":"Even the Chimps Are Going to War"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A study 30 years in the making, published <a href=\"https:\/\/www.science.org\/doi\/10.1126\/science.adz4944\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">last week<\/a> in Science, announced an explosive finding: The largest known group of wild chimpanzees, located in Uganda\u2019s Kibale National Park, is locked in a bloody civil war. The study\u2019s authors said this might be the first \u201crare fission of a wild chimpanzee group and subsequent lethal aggression against former group members\u201d in 500 years. At least 24 chimpanzees have been killed out of a total of about 200.<\/p>\n<p>I asked evolutionary biologist Colin Wright to explain what turned these Ngogo chimpanzees against each other, whether their civil war can be stopped, and what it tells us about humans.<\/p>\n<p>Wright isn\u2019t one of the article\u2019s authors, but he has studied various animal species and their social dynamics and community ecology. He is also founding editor of Reality\u2019s Last Stand, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.realityslaststand.com\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">an online publication<\/a> about free speech, science, and reality, and a fellow at the Manhattan Institute. His responses have been lightly edited for clarity and length.<\/p>\n<p>Tanner Nau: What\u2019s going on with the chimpanzees? Why are they waging war on each other?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A study 30 years in the making, published last week in Science, announced an explosive finding: The largest&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":376807,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[111,139,69,147,406],"class_list":{"0":"post-376806","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-new-zealand","9":"tag-newzealand","10":"tag-nz","11":"tag-science","12":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=376806"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376806\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/376807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=376806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=376806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=376806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}