Chimps at war

The news is filled with reports of wars and conflicts, in which modern weapons inflict widespread death and suffering. And those are just the conflicts that reach our feeds. We live in a time when small, local conflicts are increasing. Wars affect millions of civilians, both adults and children.

Humans are, unfortunately, experts in the business of war, but animals may be too. We have long observed aggression between animals, often in defence of territory or to protect access to mates. These are usually individual acts of aggression, not wars. Some species engage in group conflict to protect access to resources, but these groups are usually kin-based, like wolf packs. Such conflicts could approach the definition of war: armed conflict between groups.

A brother’s blood

Now primatologists have observed a true civil war among wild chimpanzees. A large group of chimpanzees in Ngogo, Uganda, which has been studied for over thirty years, split into two groups from 2014 to 2018, each maintaining a separate territory. The scientists who observed this behaviour noted that food resources were abundant and could support both groups. At first, the two groups were peaceful. But from 2018 to 2024, the smaller group carried out attacks on the larger, killing multiple males and infants. What is unique is that the individuals in this war were chimps who had previously been part of the same large group and clearly knew each other. What was once a community had become enemies.

In fact, this war is maybe even more upsetting. Male chimpanzees stay in their home community (females move), so what was once a large extended family is now a family riven by violence.

Chimps are long-lived, so the full ancestry and relatedness of the adult males in this community remain unclear (even with thirty years of observation). And it is also unclear whether chimps in general know who their brothers are. But we do know they can recognize individuals, and this community of (likely) brothers has taken to war.

Sin in creation

While there are many lessons to be learned from this chimpanzee civil war, I would like to view it from a theological perspective. War has always been something that Christians struggle with understanding and sometimes justifying. Scripture contains examples of God-mandated aggression and war. Some Christian groups are explicitly pacifist, and others invoke a concept of just war. Regardless, I think it’s safe to assume that all Christians regret war and would prefer it not happen. War, at best, is one of the sometimes-necessary consequences of sin in creation.

Aggression and killing are part of nature. Animals often need to defend territory and reproductive opportunities. These behaviours extend to almost all animal species, seemingly a part of God’s good creation order. While Scripture may speak of the wolf living with the lamb (Is. 11:6), this is clearly aspirational and does not reflect the current reality. But what we see in this chimpanzee community goes beyond the normal and appears to me to be sinful. This civil war suggests that the brokenness of creation extends beyond humanity, infecting even animals, and is not simply a result of our mistreatment of creation.