The largest known group of wild chimpanzees has permanently split into two warring factions in what scientists are describing as only the second “civil war” ever observed in the species. A study published in the journal Science on April 9 details how the Ngogo chimpanzee community in Uganda’s Kibale National Park, once a unified group of roughly 200 individuals studied by researchers for nearly 30 years, fractured into two distinct factions known as the Western and Central groups. The division began gradually around 2015 after a series of destabilising events including the deaths of several key males who had connected different social clusters, a change in alpha male leadership, and a respiratory epidemic in 2017 that killed 25 chimpanzees. By 2018, the two groups had stopped sharing territory entirely and began behaving as hostile outsiders toward one another. What followed was years of sustained lethal violence. Between 2018 and 2024, researchers documented Western chimpanzees killing seven adult males and 17 infants from the Central group, with an additional 14 adolescent and adult males disappearing during the same period. Researchers say the conflict is still ongoing, with further attacks recorded in 2025 and 2026. Scientists estimate that permanent group splits in chimpanzee communities occur roughly once every 500 years #reelheadline #pubity #viral