CNN Chimpanzees ' lethal attacks on gorillas in the wild have been observed for the first time, a team of researchers has said. Chimps and gorillas in Loango National Park were watched as part of the study. Experts observing dozens of chimps at Loango National Park in Gabon had expected them to be relaxed around gorillas. But while the two species were usually playful, the researchers were surprised to witness occasional vicious attacks. Southern, the study's lead author, in a press release.
Read More. Among the people at Bulindi, attitudes toward the chimpanzees vary. One woman told me she wished they would stay in the forest. An amiable matriarch named Lillian Tinkasiimire, whose little red-brick house is graced with a mango tree in front, a fig tree behind, both of which attract chimpanzees, takes a steady view. If you chase them, you will see fire. Her attitude is, let the chimps live there, let them be, let them visit.
McLennan hopes to encourage such tolerance and help make it less costly. It provides development assistance to families in the area and incentives to mitigate human-chimp conflict: payment of school fees in exchange for reforestation, for example, and starter plants for shade-grown coffee, fuel-efficient stoves that use less firewood, new borehole wells that allow women and children to avoid chimpanzees as they gather at stream pools to drink when fetching water.
At Kyamajaka and other villages near the town of Muhororo, three hours southwest of Bulindi, things are different. No one knows how many chimpanzees lurk or cower in the Muhororo forest remnants maybe 20, maybe fewer?
What person would want to live in such a place? Kahwa deferred to his elder brother, Sebowa Kesi Baguma, the village chairman, to tell us about it. Baguma, a grave but cordial man wearing a yellow T-shirt and green gum boots, produced a police report and showed us the postmortem photos, printed in shadowy but lurid magenta.
According to the times listed on the report, little Ali took almost 12 hours to die. The national reserves, such as Budongo and others, with sizeable chimpanzee populations, are a problem of one sort for the Uganda Wildlife Authority. Those areas are degraded by illegal woodcutting, cropping, and settlement, with which the agency, in partnership with the National Forestry Authority, deals firmly. Some illicit settlers are even evicted from the reserves. She spoke in Runyoro, the Bunyoro language.
She waved her hand at a cornfield. People tell us the chimps are beneficial. Why not move the chimps? Yes, people ask about that, McLennan told me. But move them where? And dropping them into occupied habitat would be murderously stupid, provoking chimpanzee war. Another dire option: Kill the chimps, fast and cleanly, to protect the people and put the chimps out of their misery. But are they in misery, with their high body fat and their healthy reproduction, fuelled by pilfered mangoes and jackfruit?
No one is likely to advocate killing these chimps, dangerous though they may be, as official Uganda policy. Once adopted, where would that line end? Small projects, reforestation incentives, tactical mitigations, borehole wells, alternate sources of income, patience, sympathy.
Creating greater awareness, as the Uganda Wildlife Authority suggests, of the immediate dangers and how to avert them, as well as the long-term possibilities, if any, of economic benefit from small-scale tourism. Incremental but tireless efforts to help chimps and humans observe an uneasy truce. Less forest, more people, more desperation among the chimps, more conflict. What makes a village like Kyamajaka seem so pitiable, and a town like Bulindi seem so important, is that in those two places the future has arrived.
National Geographic National Geographic. By David Quammen. Published 8 Nov , GMT. In July , a large chimp snatched and killed a toddler named Mujuni Semata outside the family home in Kyamajaka village. Over time, the chimps returned to loom menacingly around the house, posing a threat to the other children. After the family fled to another village, the chimps continued harrying Kyamajaka—even glowering at their own reflections in the windows of the vacant Semata house.
Left: Some villagers set snares in the forest to trap antelope, bush pigs, and other animals for food. Chimps, despite a taboo in Uganda against eating them, become unintended victims. About a third of the chimps in one community in Kibale National Park have suffered snare injuries, including this young male, known to researchers as Max, who lost both feet.
Right: Teddy Atuhaire was a four-year-old in Mukichanga village, when a chimp entered the house while her mother was gone and carried Teddy away into a tree. The chimp gashed her head, broke her arm so badly it had to be amputated, and dropped her. The years of recovery have been difficult. With her parents dead, her siblings dead or gone, she lives by occasional labour and care from her aunts. Photograph by Ronan Donovan. Before surrendering their house, the Sematas built a simple bamboo fence for protection around their backyard kitchen.
But the chimps still came near, taking papaya and jackfruit from trees close to the house, frighteningly present. So the family left.
Ntegeka Semata comforts her two younger children, both born since their brother was killed. They left Kyamajaka for an inadequate new home: a rented room, safe from chimps but with no land to farm.
Clearing of forest, both by small farmers and by giant sugarcane and tea enterprises, has shrunk chimp habitat to patches and strips, such as this stream forest in the Kinyara Sugar Works plantation, near a village called Kabango. According to one source, four children in Kabango have been attacked—and two killed—by chimps during the past decade. This female and her youngsters belong to a group of 22, marooned in a forest fragment along a stream corridor not far from Mparangasi.
She carries an infant at her belly and a toddler on her back. Kyamajaka village has lost three children to chimp attacks during the past five years. What might cause a chimp to attack someone it knows? They're very complex creatures. People must not assume that with someone they already know there's not some underlying tension. It's often impossible to figure out what reason they have for attacking. Having a chimp in your home is like having a tiger in your home. It's not really very different.
They are both very dangerous. Do you think Lyme disease or the Xanax might have been a factor in the attack? It's all possible.
It's possible it was the Xanax. In general, in chimpanzees—because they are so genetically close to us—they will react very similarly to drugs. It might be that the dosages are different, but it really should be pretty much the same. A chimp in your home is like a time bomb.
It may go off for a reason that we may never understand. I don't know any chimp relationship that has been harmonious.
Usually these animals end up in a cage. They cannot be controlled. When a chimp is young, they're very cute and affectionate and funny and playful. There's a lot of appeal. But that's like a tiger cub—they're also a lot of fun to have. What happens when people decide they can't live with a chimpanzee pet any longer? There are chimpanzee sanctuaries. If you want to put a chimp in a sanctuary, I would think you would have to come with a lot of money—it's pretty much for lifelong maintenance.
A chimp can live for about 50 years, and 10 is usually the age when people don't want them any more. So that's 40 years of care. I don't know where people would find these animals or why you would want to have them.
Even if a chimp were not dangerous, you have to wonder if the chimp is happy in a human household environment.
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