COVID-19 Latest
World|science|September 19, 2014 / 05:21 PM
Murder 'comes naturally' to chimpanzees, study finds

AKIPRESS.COM - _77646868_3patrolA major study suggests that killing among chimpanzees results from normal competition, not human interference.

Apart from humans, chimpanzees are the only primates known to gang up on their neighbours with lethal results - but primatologists have long disagreed about the underlying reasons.

One proposal was that human activity, including destroying habitats and providing food, increased aggression.

But the new findings, published in Nature, suggest this is not the case.

Instead, murder rates in different chimp communities simply reflect the numerical make-up of the local population.

The international study was co-written by more than 30 scientists and gathers data from some 426 combined years of observation, across 18 different chimp communities.

A total of 152 killings were reported. This includes 58 that were directly observed by researchers; the rest were counted based on detective work - tell-tale injuries or other circumstances surrounding an animal's death or disappearance.

All rights reserved

© AKIpress News Agency - 2001-2024.

Republication of any material is prohibited without a written agreement with AKIpress News Agency.

Any citation must be accompanied by a hyperlink to akipress.com.

Our address:

299/5 Chingiz Aitmatov Prosp., Bishkek, the Kyrgyz Republic

e-mail: english@akipress.org, akipressenglish@gmail.com;

Follow us:

Log in


Forgot your password? - recover

Not registered yet? - sign-up

Sign-up

I have an account - log in

Password recovery

I have an account - log in