Researchers posit several theories that could explain the lethal attacks. The study reports that while the victims in both attacks were infant gorillas, the "consumption of one victim was observed in one event only." The second attack resulted in the death of one infant gorilla. In both attacks - which lasted 52 minutes and 79 minutes, respectively - the chimpanzees reportedly "formed coalitions and attacked the gorillas." Sky News reports that the first attack resulted in one dead infant gorilla and three injured chimpanzees. "We heard chest beats, a display characteristic for gorillas, and realized that the chimpanzees had encountered a group of five gorillas," Southern said. But, another sound told them they were wrong. Initially, she and the rest of the team believed they were about to witness a "typical encounter" between chimpanzees of neighboring communities. She recalled first hearing the screams of chimpanzees. Southern, the first author of the study, said that the attack happened back in 2019. "Our colleagues from Congo even witnessed playful interactions between the two great ape species."īut as the team observed a group of around 45 chimpanzees living at the Loango National Park, they witnessed the first recorded attack between the two ape species. "We have regularly observed both species interacting peacefully in foraging trees," said Simone Pika, a cognitive biologist at Osnabrück University.
Researchers from Osnabrück University and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology have characterized relationships between chimpanzees and gorillas as "relatively relaxed," according to an article published in the Max Planck Institute newsroom. Researchers will begin to investigate the cause of the violence however, theories suggest that competition for food or possibly climate change could explain the violent encounters. The attacks, which resulted in gorilla fatalities, were documented in a study recently published in the journal Nature.
For the first time on record, a research team from Leipzig, Germany, has observed lethal chimpanzee attacks on gorillas in the wild.
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