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First lethal attacks by chimpanzees on gorillas observed

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Re: First lethal attacks by chimpanzees on gorillas observed

#51
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN is not strictly a tech form. The goal is what’s interesting, the audience is tech focused but the third ranked link is currently: Lost world revealed by human, Neanderthal relics washed up on North Sea beaches (sciencemag.org) 226 points by chippy 8 hours ago 81 comments Yesterday’s top 10 had: https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2021-07-20 Restaurant workers quit at record rate (npr.org) 434 points by boulos 1…

I think what the commenter was referring to was with type of discussion than the nature of the post.

The comment you responded to responded to the comment it responded to.

Re: First lethal attacks by chimpanzees on gorillas observed

#53

I am surprised silverback gorillas were not capable of protecting their clan.. A full grown gorilla has a 1,300 PSI bite force.

There were 18 chimpanzees vs. 1 silverback. While the silverback was getting harassed by 10 chimpanzees, the gorilla infant could be targetted by the other chimpanzees.

Moreover, the silverback was troubled by the presence of human observers and fled 3 minutes later, whereas the chimpanzees were habituated to the human presence.

Quotes below:

> In both events, the chimpanzees considerably outnumbered the gorillas. [...] At 17:13, the silverback charged an adolescent female chimpanzee, Gia, knocking her into the air. At 17:15, a group of approximately nine male chimpanzees (adults and adolescents), and at least one adult female chimpanzee surrounded the silverback, and repeatedly jumped down on and hit him whilst screaming and barking. [Meanwhile, the gorilla infant could be kidnapped by the other chimpanzees.] At 17:22, one adult male chimpanzee, Littlegrey, was observed sitting on the ground holding a gorilla infant in front of him.

> During the first encounter the silverback was present for 14 min [out of a total of 52 min], whilst in the second encounter the silverback was present for 10 min [out of a total of 74 min]. [...] At 12:33, the silverback discovered the human observers on the ground in a distance of approximately 30 m to the base of the tree and started barking. [...] At 12:36, the silverback rapidly climbed down the tree and fled. The chimpanzees continued barking but did not follow him. [...] We cannot rule out that the presence of human observers, in both events, may have had an effect on the unhabituated silverback’s departure and may have tilted the imbalance of power in favour of the habituated chimpanzees.

Re: First lethal attacks by chimpanzees on gorillas observed

#54
post #29
post #13

> "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." Declaring the cause must be food competition or climate change seems a bit hasty? These are complex social animals. Given this is the only attack ever observed, it seems possible to me that there are a myriad of plausible one-off explanations. Pe…

> Perhaps a particular chimp or gorilla was having a really bad day and just went out looking for a fight. This doesn't necessarily contradict the food competition or climate change hypothesis. To the individual ape it might seem that he's just having a bad day, but then you could look at weather/food data and compare it to incidence of violence and see a causal relation. It would actually be surprising if those thin…

I know many humans who get very grumpy on an empty stomach.

Re: First lethal attacks by chimpanzees on gorillas observed

#55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They've turned climate change into the new boogeyman, which is a shame since it's an important issue.

and why is it an important issue? In part because of the ecological stresses it causes, which results in less supply of resources in a given ecological niche. Seems entirely reasonable to hypothesise the cause of aggression being related to this. That's not something they tested, merely a proposed hypothesis.

It's a convenient hypothesis, given the ubiquity of climate change impacts, but also a lazy one, like blaming the aggression on something equally as prevalent and relevant to the situation, like chimp genetics. The hypothesis is untestable absent some other specific assertions, and therefore unscientific.

Re: First lethal attacks by chimpanzees on gorillas observed

#56
post #13

> "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." Declaring the cause must be food competition or climate change seems a bit hasty? These are complex social animals. Given this is the only attack ever observed, it seems possible to me that there are a myriad of plausible one-off explanations. Pe…

They've turned climate change into the new boogeyman, which is a shame since it's an important issue.

Give it few more weeks of research and they'll blame it on covid.

Re: First lethal attacks by chimpanzees on gorillas observed

#57
From the videos, it looks like the human observers were about ten meters away.

That made me wonder how risky filming this is.

Google didn’t give me cases of attacks on observers, but it did give me https://observers.france24.com/en/20120926-midst-armed-confl..., so I think those observers are at some risk.

It also taught me chimpanzee wars exist (https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22229682-600-only-kno...)

Re: First lethal attacks by chimpanzees on gorillas observed

#59

Never have I been more disappointed that an article didn’t include video.

There are videos https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-93829-x

"At 13:15, Chenge followed by an adult female, Roxy, climbed up the tree. Roxy moved toward Greta and took the body. She then began to consume the hands and internal organs of the gorilla infant. Between 13:16 and 14:00, Roxy allowed Chenge, Littlegrey, Onome, Orian, and Queliba to access small amounts of meat, no begging behaviour was observed between individuals. A final gorilla chest beat was heard at 13:46 in a North-East direction of the observers."

That's pretty gruesome.

Re: First lethal attacks by chimpanzees on gorillas observed

#60
post #53

I am surprised silverback gorillas were not capable of protecting their clan.. A full grown gorilla has a 1,300 PSI bite force.

There were 18 chimpanzees vs. 1 silverback. While the silverback was getting harassed by 10 chimpanzees, the gorilla infant could be targetted by the other chimpanzees. Moreover, the silverback was troubled by the presence of human observers and fled 3 minutes later, whereas the chimpanzees were habituated to the human presence. Quotes below: > In both events, the chimpanzees considerably outnumbered the gorillas. [.…

If I was one of the researchers, I would be very worried about having been associated with this encounter, the next time I see some gorilla.
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