First lethal attacks by chimpanzees on gorillas observed
A research team from Osnabrück University and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, has, for the first time, observed lethal attacks by chimpanzees on gorillas in the wild. Whether this behavior is due to competition for food or to the decline of the rainforest's productivity caused by climate change will now be investigated in more detail.
Chimpanzees are common in East and Central Africa and live with gorillas in some areas such as the Loango National Park in Gabon. This park has also been home to the Loango Chimpanzee Project since 2005, led by Tobias Deschner, a primatologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, and Simone Pika, a gognitive biologist at Osnabrück University. In Loango, the researchers are observing and analyzing the behavior of around 45 chimpanzees with a special focus on group composition, social relationships, interactions with neighboring groups, hunting behavior, tool use and communicative skills. “Interactions between chimpanzees and gorillas have so far been considered as relatively relaxed”, says Simone Pika. "We have regularly observed both species interacting peacefully in foraging trees. Our colleagues from Congo even witnessed playful interactions between the two great ape species."
Lethal encounters between the chimpanzees and gorillas have so far never been documented. "Our observations provide the first evidence that the presence of chimpanzees can have a lethal impact on gorillas. We now want to investigate the factors triggering these surprisingly aggressive interactions," says Tobias Deschner.
