![]() During attacks, chimps will target a person's face, hands, feet and genitals. Most of the time these are isolated and seemingly reckless attacks by individual chimps, but one chimpanzee in the 1990s killed seven children before he was killed by humans, National Geographic reported.Ĭaptive or pet chimpanzees attack people far more often than their wild kin, because they can lose their fear of people altogether. Chimps have also snatched and killed human babies. Chimpanzees typically direct their aggressive and sometimes predatory behavior toward children because the animals are more fearful of larger human adults, especially men, according to National Geographic. Chimpanzees may then take to stealing unprotected human food, such as crops, and in the process become more confident around humans.Ĭhimpanzees have attacked more than 20 people in the Western Region of Uganda over the past 20 years and killed at least three human infants since 2014, National Geographic reported in 2019. This usually happens when humans move into and destroy chimpanzee habitats, reducing their access to food. However, there have been recorded incidents of chimpanzees attacking and killing people. Wild chimpanzees are usually fearful of humans and will keep their distance. ![]() His team of researchers studied 152 killings, in 15 ape communities.Īttacks were more common at sites with many males and high population densities.(Image credit: Anup Shah via Getty Images) “Violence is a natural part of life for chimpanzees,” said Dr Wilson, Minnesota University’s associate professor of ecology, evolution and behaviour. This was despite the Ugandan chimp population had little contact with human beings.ĭr Wilson concluded that “the evidence shows no connection between human impact on the chimpanzee sites and the number of killings”, although some scientists disputed his findings. His study included observations of chimpanzees in the Republic of Congo, and in Uganda which “turned out to be the most violent group of chimpanzees there is”. “They go around and kill their neighbours,” Dr Wilson said. ![]() The five-decade long study by 30 researchers deduced that warlike violence in chimpanzees evolved because it could provide more resources or territory to the killers, at little risk. Published in Nature magazine, the study led by University of Minnesota anthropologist Michael Wilson found that rival chimpanzees routinely killed each other. Picture: Hugo van Lawick.īut a study would eventually confirm Goodall’s conclusions by the 1970s, that chimps were naturally violent. “I had a feeling nothing was going to hurt me because I was meant to be here.” “Sometimes I was frightened of things like leopards, but it was the life I’d dreamed of and nothing could deter me. “There were no people out in the field whose research I could read about, except one man who painted himself with baboon poo and sat in hides, hoping chimpanzees would appear. “I didn’t know chimpanzees can rip your face off,” Goodall said. Primatologist Jane Goodall hit home the point in the recently-released documentary Jane, about her life studying chimpanzees, starting in Eastern Africa more than four decades ago.īack then, Goodall thought chimpanzees were friendly apes, and neither frightening nor as dangerous as Africa’s big cats, lions, leopards and cheetahs.īut as her research would reveal, chimpanzees were dangerous and the DNA they share with humans gave humans our dark side, The Mirror reported. HUMAN beings inherited warlike nature and aggressive characteristics from chimpanzees, one of our closest living relatives.
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