There’s a ‘civil war’ happening between two groups of chimpanzees

A new study into animal behaviour has identified the first ever 'civil war' in wild chimpanzees.

That's right, apparently, humans aren't the only ones who can have years-long conflicts, as it's been discovered that 200 of the primates are at odds with each other, in a vicious and bloody war.

A study released this week in the journal Science, primatologist Aaron Sandel and his colleagues have outlined the shocking first of it's kind situation.

The research outlines that while group conflict among nonhuman animals is well known, lethal conflict among groups of animals that were once socially affiliated 'has not previously been observed outside of humans, in whom cultural ideologies can drive divisions among individuals within the same group'.

Animal experts have identified a 'rare, permanent fission' in the largest-known group of wild chimpanzees, who are located in Uganda’s Kibale National Park.

For at least two decades, the 200-strong group lived harmoniously as a unified community, until 2015, when something shifted within their dynamics.

The world's largest group of chimpanzees are viciously at war with each other (Getty Stock Image)

By 2018, two differing groups had emerged: the western chimps and the central chimps.

Researchers analysed 24 years of social networks, 10 years of GPS-based ranging, and 30 years of demographic data.

With the two groups separated, members of the western group made 24 'sustained and coordinated attacks' and raids on their rivals within seven years, killing at least seven adult males and 17 infants.

And the number is likely higher as an additional 14 adolescent and adult central males disappeared or died unexpectedly between 2021 and 2024, and starting in 2021, the lethal aggression even expanded to infants.

As per The Guardian, Sandel said: "Cases where neighbours are killing neighbours is more troubling and, in a way, it gets closer to the human condition. How do we have this seeming contradiction within us where we are able to cooperate, but then also very quickly turn on one another?

"These shifting group identities and dynamics that we see in human civil war rarely have a parallel in other animals, but they do have a parallel in the case of chimpanzees."

He added: "Nothing like this has ever been observed before,’ Sandel said. ‘[Ngogo] is the first time that you could say definitively that the civil war is actually happening," as reported by Metro.

The group split off into two formation - the central and western chimps (Getty Stock Image)

Although there's no way to know for sure, the experts have guessed that the group getting larger in numbers meant the social order broke down.

Competition over food could have also been a factor, as could the death of alpha males and who succeeded them.

All we know is this conflict is something new, with something like it apparently only happening once every 500 years.

And what researchers found interesting is that nonhuman species do not have religion, cultural institutions, or political ideology, yet several 'display components of human warfare, including territorial conflicts and lethal aggression'.

The study concluded: "These findings indicate that group identities can shift and escalate into lethal hostility in one of our closest living relatives in the absence of the cultural markers often thought necessary for human warfare."