The Gombe Chimpanzee War

Are humans truly unique in their propensity for violence, or do our primate relatives share this dark trait? 

Join us for a compelling exploration of the Gombe War, where we uncover the chilling parallels between human and chimpanzee behaviors. We'll discuss the groundbreaking work of Jane Goodall in Gombe Stream National Park, detailing the bloody civil war that erupted following the death of the chimpanzee leader, Leakey. 

Hear about the brutal attack on Goatee and how the factions led by Humphrey and the brothers Hugh and Charlie mirrored human conflicts in ways that will leave you questioning the nature of aggression.

Through this gripping narrative, we challenge the notion that humans are uniquely violent, presenting evidence that such behaviors are embedded in our genetic cousins as well. Prepare yourself for an eye-opening journey into the primal instincts that drive both human and chimpanzee actions.

Chapters

• 0:34 Chimpanzee Civil War and Human Violence
• 18:15 Chimpanzee Aggression and Territory Wars
• 27:55 Support the Podcast With Coffee

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:34

Hey everybody and welcome back to another episode of the Speak Plainly podcast, where we speak plainly about things that matter. I am your host, owl Medicine, and in today's podcast, what we're going to be talking about is the incredible similarities between human beings and chimpanzees, and we're going to do this by examining the first recorded instance of human-level violence in chimpanzees human-level violence in chimpanzees. So most of us know that we're all really closely related to chimpanzees and like 98 or 99% of our genetic makeup is that of a chimpanzee. Now, of course, there's lots of wiggle room between gene, gene expression, junk DNA, the genome itself. I mean, they recently found an animal I think it was a, I can't remember, but I think it was a water animal that when they tested its genome, one gene was the length of the entire human genome. So genes are very complicated things.

Speaker 1: 1:48

However, up to this point, which we're going to be talking about, the Gombe War, the Gombe War that lasted four years. Sometimes it's just called the Gombe War, sometimes it's the Four-Year War, sometimes it's the Chimpanzee War or the Four-Year Chimpanzee War, but it's the Four Year War. Sometimes it's the Chimpanzee War or the Four Year Chimpanzee War, but it follows a group of chimpanzees whose leader died, they split apart and had a bit of a civil war between them. And all of this was observed by researchers, and not just any researcher, but this was observed firsthand by Jane Goodall, who, at the time, as a doctor and world's leading researcher in chimpanzees, her opinion and everybody else's opinion was that chimpanzees were boisterous and territorial, but were generally peaceful. They were vegetarian and they were a lot like humans but did not have the violence in them that we do, at least not the same like pre-meditated level. Well, all of that changed and years after this, jane Goodall was asked about her experience with this and it really shook her to the core, to the absolute core. So that's what we're going to talk about today, because the observation and the recording, because there is actual footage of this, there are researcher notes, and it wasn't just Jane Goodall, there were a few other researchers. In fact, one of the chimpanzees that we'll be talking about almost murdered a different researcher not long before this.

Speaker 1: 3:45

So let's go back Now. We're deep in the forest in Tanzania, in the northern aspect, in Gombe Stream National Park, and in Gombe Stream National Park there lives a few different groups of chimpanzees, and chimpanzees usually live in colonies, from 1 up to 14. And in this they have the Kasakila, the Makana and the Kakambe. The Kasakila are on the north side, kakambe, the Kasakila are on the north side, the Makeuka are on the south and southeast side and the Kakambe are on the directly south side. And all of these chimpanzees, like all other chimpanzees, have groups that go around and patrol the edges of their territory to kind of keep the folks in the middle safe. And up to this point researchers had only seen they've seen these patrols come across each other and 99% of the time they observed big, boisterous displays of dominance and things would get loud but never really turn to violence.

Speaker 1: 5:08

Well, all of this changed in 1974, because three years prior, in 1971, the leader of the Casaquila named Leakey. He died, and when he died he was a marvelous leader. But power abhors a vacuum, and so when he died, this guy named Humphrey takes command, and it was Leakey who almost killed a researcher, about, I think, two years before he actually died in 1971. So about 1969, leakey almost killed a researcher, but Humphrey takes command. And when Humphrey takes command, things go well for a while, for a couple of years. But Humphrey is no Leakey. He's not able to keep everybody together the way that Leakey used to be able to.

Speaker 1: 6:06

So now we have a struggle, and part of that struggle comes from these two brothers. The brothers were named Hugh and Charlie, and Hugh and Charlie didn't like the way that Humphrey was doing things and after a while they decided that they would essentially separate. They became separatists and at first it was just loud dissent, but then they eventually grabbed four of their buddies and they all left and went south. So the group of separatists go south, separate for so long, and the two brothers led this group in such a way that they became their own independent group, their own independent colony and culture, and displayed different enough ways of being and ways of living that they were eventually considered a completely separate group. And when they were considered a completely separate group they needed a new name and that name became the Qasima or the Qahama. They needed a name and that name was the Qahama. So now we have two groups. We have the original group of loyalists who are led by the Alpha, humphrey, and in that group you have Humphrey, mike, sherry, satan, everett, fegan, rodolph and Homeo.

Speaker 1: 8:00

And this gets interesting because this group of loyalists, after a couple of years, decided seemingly randomly to attack one of the separatists. The first separatist that they attacked was Goatee, and the way they did this is chimpanzees typically eat alone. They eat alone because they're greedy little fuckers and they don't like sharing their food. They don't like sharing their food with anybody else and I imagine, being animals that do largely live on insects and leaves and vegetation, and being so dense in their mass, with their dense muscle mass and their decent size, it makes sense to me that they would want to eat alone so they can get as many, as many calories as possible, and everybody kind of fins for themselves. So this guy, goatee, is hanging out in a tree eating food all by himself, because that's what chimpanzees do. So Goatee is chilling alone in a tree when six of the loyalists all come down together Almost all of the loyalists come together at one time and they beat Goatee to death, beat Godey to death.

Speaker 1: 9:29

One of them even tries to dismember. Well, a couple of them try to dismember Godey while he is alive, dislocating a leg and beating him so bad they crushed in his face, ripped off chunks of skin and basically beat him to death and, sure enough, a couple of days later he died, and Gaudí was the first victim of this. Now, what's crazy is that these were separatists and were like, okay, well, maybe he said something to piss them off, I don't know, but they were living entirely separately for multiple years and the northern loyalists of the Casaquila went out of their way to go south into kahama territory and murder goatee after goatee in very short order. They then go after d and they killed d, and then the same group of loyalists then go after, after Goliath, and this is where things got really screwy, because Goliath was the elder of the Kahama. He was an elder when the Kahama and the Kasakila were one group and Goliath was a peacekeeper and everybody liked him. Everybody got along with Goliath. He was old, he was strong, he was smart, he was whatever. Everybody liked Goliath.

Speaker 1: 10:53

But that didn't stop them from absolutely doing horrible things to Goliath. They did the same thing. They specifically Homeo and Fegan, attacked Goliath brutally. And what was really messed up about this is Jane Goodall and the other researchers had been watching these chimpanzees for years, obviously, and Fegan looked up to Goliath like an older brother. He was his childhood hero, he was the elder in the group, and Homeo did too, but Fegan especially just seemed to almost worship Goliath and now, a few years later, it feels like divorced parents or something, where they're all talking shit about the other parent. And now Fegan, who used to nearly worship Goliath, was part of dismembering him and ripping chunks of flesh off of him.

Speaker 1: 11:44

After they kill Goliath, they kill one of the brothers, hugh. After Hugh, they kill the other brother, charlie, and now there is only one left. There's only Sniff, and yes, sniff is his name. And this happened over the course of a couple of years it's a four-year war. But between when they killed Charlie, the last of the two brothers, and Sniff, sniff managed to survive against all odds for like almost a year and then eventually was attacked, was found, attacked and murdered by the Kasakila northern chimpanzees, the Loyalists.

Speaker 1: 12:26

Okay, after the males had been dealt with, now it's time to deal with the females. And there were a couple of females, including one named Gigi who was running around and helping fight and helping boost morale, trying to get stuff done and provide some strength for their dwindling community. But of the female chimps, one was killed, killed, two went missing and three were beaten and kidnapped by the casaquila. So three of them were beaten and taken back and were force assimilated back into the northern uh, the northern group, the casaquila, and who knows what happened to the other two, probably murdered, maybe they got away. Who, who really knows? But by 1978, and this, the war, the first murder with Godi, started. That happened in 1974. And by 1978, every single Kahama was dead, every single separatist who left, including the children and the wives. All of them were dead.

Speaker 1: 13:31

And Jane Goodall, when she was asked about this, had absolute nightmares. She said she had multiple nightmares because she thought up to this point that chimpanzees were peaceful vegetarians for the most part. And I think, especially in the 70s, at the time, with the way culture was and the way science was, and coming out of the Vietnam War and the Second World War and the Vietnam War, all of these ideas that we had about chimps, I, it makes sense to me that researchers, jane goodall or anybody else would, I know I, would, I, I let me just speak for me. I would have loved to have been able to look at the chimpanzees, our nearest relatives, and seen a peace loving species. But that isn't what we found. It would have been nice to have found a peace-loving species to point at and say, hey, these are our nearest genetic neighbors. These are the things that we are most like in the world and they're pretty decent to each other. Maybe we can be decent too.

Speaker 1: 14:50

But Satan, who you might have heard me list the name? In the loyalists there was Humphrey, mike, satan, sherry, everett, fegan, rudolph and Homeo and Satan, named for the darkness in him. There was a moment where, with Godi, with the first one that they killed, and maybe this is why they named him Satan. I don't know when the namings all happened, I assume it was beforehand. Maybe he showed some darker things beforehand, but either way, satan was seen cupping his hand under the chin of Godi, an old friend of his, cupping the hands under Godi's face, as Godi was bleeding from a wound in his face and he was drinking the blood. When they murdered Godi, what shocked them the most, outside of the murder and the premeditatedness of all of this, and how it came a few years after seeming like retribution, a few years after their taking leave of the Casaquila group, legs and shouted and screamed and celebrated over the dead bodies, not just of Gody, but over Goliath and over Sniff, the other ones they found dead in the same way. Some of them they observed the actual death and some they found the bodies afterward, they being the researchers here.

Speaker 1: 16:37

And man, can you imagine being jane goodall being the first woman to the first person to really go? We don't know enough about chimpanzees. They're our closest relative and I want to go. Spend as much time with them as humanly possible, living with them in the jungle, being around them and having this beautiful naive view of what and who chimpanzees are. And then to see them systematically murder an entire colony and then move in and take over their space must have been a real shocker. And that's a that. That is exactly what she said that it was because she sat up many nights having nightmares of satan drinking the blood of goatee's face, of fegan who was usually quite docile celebrating and ripping chunks of flesh off of his childhood hero, goliath. When we think about this now, looking back and being 50 years in the future, when we think about this, we're like, oh yeah, that makes sense. Chimps are kind of fucked up, they're kind of evil. But this was the first time that we knew that and when Jane Goodall went to report this probably because, one, it's new information and number two or maybe this should be number one she was a female she was basically told that she was anthropomorphizing all of this, that she is attributing human attributes to things that have no business having human attributes attributed to them.

Speaker 1: 18:15

But since the Gombe War, there have been many, many other conflicts and things that you might consider a war that have been documented by researchers in the wild all over the place. So it turns out that the chimpanzees are not vegetarians, that they do have these premeditated murderous things and that when they decide that you're going to die, they do it very well planned out. They attacked Godi when he was alone, when he was at his most vulnerable in a group, and then did horrible things to him, left him to die, didn't even murder him immediately, but like, left him so injured they knew for sure he would die after drinking the blood from his freaking face and trying to literally rip his leg off of his body. These chimpanzees, wow. Just that's crazy. So that was the first part of the chimpanzee war. But now the Kahama are all dead.

Speaker 1: 19:25

And now this group that was like 14 a few years before the Kasakila, that had all the loyalists and all the separatists that were able to easily maintain their territory. Well, the loyalists went down, killed all the separatists, took over their territory, but now they have twice the territory that they had for the last couple of years and half of the people to be able to man that territory, to be able to protect that territory. So those neighboring tribes of chimpanzees, those neighboring groups of chimpanzees, tribes of chimpanzees, those neighboring groups of chimpanzees that were surrounding the Kasakila, they moved in because now they outnumbered them by far. One moved in from the south and pushed the Kasakila back up north and they lost all of the land that they had taken from the Kasama, from the separatists. They lost all of that land and now they were back to just the land that they had before. But then another group came in from the east and pushed them back even further, because now they have so little. They were pushed all the way down into having less than a two square mile territory, which is very small for chimpanzees. They were pushed down to having nothing because they did a very human thing and there was a power vacuum.

Speaker 1: 20:51

People fought for the power. One person wound up taking that power, a couple of brothers who were I mean, this sounds like ancient China or any of these old human tales. These two brothers were like fuck that guy, we should have the power and because there's two of them and they're brothers, they're going to be tight. So they decide to separate and after a while the king's like, fuck them, we're going to go murder all of them, not thinking about oh well, if we do that, we're going to lose all of our territory. And that's exactly what happened. They went in, eradicated all of the separatists, lost that southern territory, went back north, had just fought a war, basically, and then lost a whole chunk of their eastern territory and the Kasakhila were relished to a two-squ. Two square mile territory, which is nothing. I think this story is crazy. I think this story is super cool. Like we can look at it now and be like, okay, yeah, whatever.

Speaker 1: 21:56

Or the viewpoint of a researcher in the 70s who had this idea of a peaceful, vegetarian chimpanzee. To see them suddenly drinking each other's blood and dismembering each other and systematically killing each other was crazy. And this same group, the Kasakila? They also found out that they weren't vegetarian, not only by them drinking the blood of their rivals, but because they would systematically hunt and kill other types of smaller monkeys. They specifically did this with Columbus monkeys. Monkeys were a smaller, more vulnerable group of monkeys that the caciquila and, I'm assuming, other chimpanzees, but they actually watched them with this. What they would do is they would go in and basically stir the pot to make everybody scramble all the little Columbus monkeys scramble, and they would systematically have one person go in and stir the pot while other groups from the Casaquila, other individuals from the Casaquila group, would go to the exits. Because in the forest there are places that are thick, there are places where there are paths that you can take just like anywhere else, and they would go to these more well-trodden paths that they used to travel around and escape. And they would actually to these more well-trodden paths that they used to travel around and escape and they would actually physically block them off. And because they had them completely surrounded and blocked their exits, the Caciquila chimpanzees were able to then catch, collect, kill and eat the monkeys, dismembering the monkeys and handing legs and limbs and heads and bodies to each other to share in the feast.

Speaker 1: 23:49

All of this is kind of mad, especially when you take into account that this group of chimpanzees were also fighting gorillas. Were they gorillas? Were they gorillas? No baboons? They were also fighting to maintain their territory and maintain their lives and things from baboons, because baboons are also very aggressive and baboons have been known even at that time had been known to go in and steal chimpanzee babies and take them and assumingly kill or eat or raise them. I don't know, but they would go in and steal the babies and probably eat them, because we know that they're also not vegetarians.

Speaker 1: 24:35

So the reason I bring all of this up is just to say we love to think that we're so special as human beings. We love to think that we're so special as human beings we love to think that we are the most special, and we do that in good ways and bad ways. And one of the things I think was hopeful was saying that we're special in we are evil, psychotic people who premeditate the murder of our peers. And only we are so evil. Except it turns out that that's not true at all and you may have already known that chimpanzees were pretty messed up. But now you have some details and now you know the first ever story that was reported that really put this all on blast and changed everything about primatology. So there you go.

Speaker 1: 25:21

That is the Gombe War. That is the war that happened in northern Tanzania at the Gombe Stream National Park. That was the Kasakila, who, then the leader of the Kasakila, died. There became a power vacuum and, as we know, power abhors a vacuum. So this guy, humphrey, comes in and these two brothers don't really like that very much because they were pretty aggressive and they decided to separate and eventually all the separatists that they brought along with them were systematically murdered in really gruesome ways, celebrating over the body like living dismemberment and drinking the blood of their like on gushing out of the face of their previous friends.

Speaker 1: 26:15

So chimpanzees are not that different. Human beings are not that different. Human beings are not that different. And the reason I think that this is important is I really believe that if we all stop believing that human beings are precious, perfect little angels and all of the bad things that happen are because of the evil world that we're in, I really think that we would all be much happier mentally and we would have a much better understanding and have a much better outlook at least this is my own personal spin if we understood that human beings are deeply flawed. We are deeply flawed on a genetic level. As far as what we would like to be right, we want to be a peace-loving blah, blah, blah, like Goliath in our story here, who was still ripped apart and dismembered by the people that used to look up to him. But if we can just accept that we're fucked, that there are great things about us and there are horrible things about us, that there are great things about us and there are horrible things about us, and both of those are deeply imprinted into our biology and have nothing to do with choice or temperament or any of that or that. Maybe temperament is influenced by these biological predilections. I think we'd all be much better off. I think we'd all be much better off. We'd all be much better off. I think we'd all be much better off.

Speaker 1: 27:46

So thank you for hanging out with me today. This is a short one. I hope that you enjoy it. This is everything that you might want to know about the four-year chimpanzee war. Thanks for hanging out with me today.

Speaker 1: 27:55

If you enjoyed this podcast, consider going down into the description and you'll see a link there that says buy me a coffee and you can click that link and donate five bucks and that'll get me a latte. It's better off doing it that way, I think, than like Patreon, where people have to pay every month and whatnot. So if you enjoy it and you want to throw me a latte, then go to the buy me a coffee and do that. I would really appreciate any kind of comments and things that you have about this. If this surprised you, if this terrified you, if this didn't surprise you at all and you were like, yeah, that checks out, I would love to hear about it in the comments or leave a comment. Thank you very much for spending your time with me. I hope that you have a marvelous weekend and remember, stay curious and stay uncomfortable. We'll be right back. Thank you, bye.