“I don’t like chimpanzees,” said our guide Basia.
It surprised me a lot, chimpanzees were associated with me as nice and intelligent monkeys, thinking about them I think of a chimpanzee in dungarees, in the laboratory, holding his guardian’s hand, or Tytus from the comics Tytus, Romek and Atomek (*Polish comic book series). After visiting the Kibale forest , I understood why you may not like chimpanzees…
Kibale Forest is huge and beautiful. Big trees give shelter not only to chimpanzees, but also to species of many other monkeys and birds. Chimpanzees are searched for with the ranger, trekking is easy and calm. Of course, until the group sees the chimpanzees and they come down from the trees to the ground…
Rangers are very strict in guarding tourists so that they do not get too close to chimpanzees. Of course, there is no question of any chimpanzee feeding, puffing, smacking or other ways to attract the attention of monkeys. And that’s all because chimpanzees are aggressive.
They live in nests built up to 40 meters above the ground. Males reach a weight of up to 70 kg, females a maximum of 50 kg. We differ from them by only 6% of DNA. Scientists estimate that the Homo and chimpanzee lineages diverged about 6.2 to 4.6 million years ago. They generally feed on fruit, but once every few weeks they can hunt smaller monkeys and eat them. They also kill each other between packs, in the protection of territory, and recent research indicates that chimpanzees can organize themselves into groups and plan an attack or military action. Chimpanzee murders are very brutal and the goal is to show your strength and superiority. They attack not only when an alien chimpanzee invades their territory, but they organize deliberate raids into the territory of other chimpanzees or monkeys. After a defeat, they can plan revenge and wait coldly for the right moment to take revenge on the opponent.
Among chimpanzees there are serial killers. Jane Goodall described in 1975 the case of the chimpanzee Passion, who was the first known monkey serial killer. She first observed and then attacked another chimpanzee, a young mother, beat her unconscious, bit her child, tore and fed her children with remains. From then on, both Passion and her children waited for the chimpanzee to give birth again and history repeated itself. The children of other chimpanzees faced the same fate. Children born to Passion children were immediately taught to kill and cannibalize members of their own flock.
There are also known cases of chimpanzee addiction to porn and alcohol. While in the subject of access to porn there is always a human in the background but in the case of alcohol, chimpanzees are self-sufficient. In Guinea, West Africa, chimpanzees learned how to get ethanol from palm trees, got drunk regularly becoming very aggressive after alcohol. Not only after alcohol, chimpanzees can use violence, rape members of their herd, prostitute themselves in exchange for food.
Of the nicer behaviors, you can notice the use of weapons by small chimpanzees and in some chimpanzees of both sexes a passion for fashion – they beautify themselves by putting plants and sticks in their fur or in their ears.
“I don’t like chimpanzees,” said our guide Basia. Now you can understand why.
