Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

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violence

Conflict and Reconciliation

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A quick word of warning: If you do not wish to see footage of chimps being aggressive towards one another, please skip this video.

Recently, Grace posted to our social media accounts asking people to submit questions for Q&A posts on our blog. One of the questions jumped out at me: What is the best and worst part of your job? I immediately thought of dozens of things I like best about this line of work – we get to provide the chimps with life-changing and long overdue experiences like going outdoors and climbing trees, we help them form new friendships, we are treated on a daily basis to displays of intelligence and emotion that many people still believe are reserved for humans alone, and we get to do the thing we love with people we enjoy working with in a breathtakingly beautiful environment. Oh, and I get to drive a tractor sometimes. Maybe I should have put that first? Anyway, how could I choose just one “best” thing?

But when it comes to the worst part of the job, there’s no question in my mind what it is: it’s the violence.

Chimpanzees are naturally aggressive. Not all the time, mind you, or even most of the time. Aggression actually makes up a very small part of their daily activity and is just a tiny facet of their overall demeanor. Most of their waking hours are spent resting, quietly grooming, exploring, and playing. And most of their interactions with one another are overwhelmingly friendly and cooperative – and often extremely gentle, tender, and loving. But these hours upon hours of peace and playfulness are punctuated by boisterous displays of dominance and, on occasion, acts of real, raw violence – violence between the very people we have dedicated our careers, and in many ways our whole lives, to caring for. For us caregivers, it amounts to a lot of worrying about a thing over which we have very little control.

Which brings me to this video. I’ve been wanting to share it for a while, for a couple of reasons. First, when a chimpanzee gets injured here at CSNW, people naturally ask who was fighting and why. Our answer is usually some form of “I don’t know” and “I don’t know.” It’s not because we aren’t paying attention, but rather because the nature of chimp fights make them hard to interpret at times. They can happen quickly with little warning, they rarely occur between only two individuals, and the individuals who get into a fight in the first place are not always the ones who come away injured. I’m grateful for the many books and documentaries that have demonstrated chimpanzees’ remarkable capacity for strategic aggression, but reality is often so much messier. Yes, chimps sometimes exhibit coalitionary aggression for the purpose of social status. But in addition to being Machiavellian, chimpanzees are also xenophobic, insecure, jealous, petty, anxious, and just plain cranky, and any and all of these can serve as the impetus to bite someone’s finger off.

Second, it’s important for people to get an accurate picture of how chimps live. We don’t want anyone to think that life for chimpanzees is nothing but eating, playing, and climbing trees. While we often discuss their injuries, we aren’t usually in a position to show the fights in which they occurred. As you can see, however, we can occasionally capture them on our security camera system.

But perhaps most importantly, I want to show you how they make up afterwards. Chimp societies wouldn’t hold together very long if the individuals within them didn’t have the capacity to reconcile, and that is the saving grace for both the chimpanzees themselves and our own ability to care for them. Because no matter how bad things get, they usually find a way to move forward together.

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So…the video. For what it’s worth, I’ve made it unlisted on YouTube so hopefully anyone watching will find it here and will also be reading this for context.

In the video, which is from December, you witness the beginning of the conflict as Willy B and Terry run out into the Greenhouse. Terry is upset, which you can see as he screams and splays himself out on the catwalk before running back inside for reassurance. The video picks up again in the Playroom, where Terry and Willy B face off momentarily by the door downstairs. The group congregates upstairs and Rayne then approaches Mave who is at the top of the tree structure. As Willy B moves in, possibly to protect Mave (though that is certainly open to interpretation), he comes face to face with Gordo. And that’s when all heck breaks loose. It took me several minutes of playing over and over in slow mo to piece together what was happening. For a time, I even falsely accused Rayne of a crime she didn’t commit. Sorry, Raynie!

We often differentiate between minor chimp fights and more serious ones based on whether or not they “ball up.” Balling up occurs when they grapple and bite, as opposed to chasing and hitting, at which point the caregivers can no longer tell who is who in real time. When chimps ball up, we know that we are going to have to look for injuries afterwards – checking ears and counting fingers and toes as they tend to their wounds. In this case, the chimps ball up for only a brief moment. They leap down to the floor through the fire hose vines and Willy B escapes up the stairs only to find his finger caught in Lucky’s mouth. He somehow manages to withdraw his finger intact and escapes through Playroom 3 to the Mezzanine where the screaming and reassurance-seeking continues. Fortunately, everyone made it out with only minor injuries.

At breakfast the next morning, Gordo – who was uninjured in the fight and whose “side,” you could say, came out on top – approached Willy B to reconcile. Breathy panting serves to express friendly intentions, and Gordo offers both his backside and his fingers and toes to Willy B. Isn’t it ironic that the way to make up after a fight in which you tried bite each other’s toes off is to place your toes in each other’s mouths again? While Mave and Rayne similarly reconcile, Gordo asks Willy B to follow him upstairs to groom. And once again, all is well.

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So that’s a chimp fight and the aftermath. Some are more serious, many less so. Some last for only a minute or two while others have gone on for as long as 20 minutes. The boys fight the boys, the girls fight the girls, and the boys and girls fight each other. It happens in new groups and in groups like the seven that have been together for 17 years. They are loud and fast and frequently complicated. Serious fights are relatively rare but they’re part of caring for chimps and while you never really get used to it, you do come to accept it. Running a tortoise sanctuary would certainly be better for the ol’ blood pressure. But if you love caring for chimps, as I do, you can’t pick and choose which parts you get to experience.

I’m sure this post raises more questions than it answers, so ask away and I’ll do my best to respond below! And my thanks to all of you for allowing us to explore a more serious and fraught topic from time to time. Hopefully it helps present a truer version of sanctuary life for both the chimps and the humans that care for them.

Chimpanzee Violence

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A couple of days ago, there was fight in the chimp house that resulted in a significant injury to one of Negra’s toes. We are monitoring it to determine if intervention will be necessary, and she’s on antibiotics and pain relief.

You’d never know that she had the injury unless you actually saw it, though – Negra’s behavior is no different than normal and she was showing no signs of being in pain, even before we started her on the pain relief.

I’m just going to throw some photos of Negra in here. They aren’t from today, but they do show what Negra’s behavior is generally like:

Negra protruding lip sleep

She is getting some extra attention from the other chimpanzees because any injury is of interest to the group, with other chimps always wanting to inspect and groom wounds.

burrito grooming negra

 

Chimpanzees can be really intense. We’ve shared information about conflicts and injuries before, and I’ve linked to a few blog posts on this topic at the end of this one, in case you are interested in further contemplation on fighting and making up as a chimpanzee. And there was this story about a conflict that resulted in one of Jody’s toes being bitten off (don’t worry – there are no gory photos in the post).

You may or may not have noticed that a few of the chimpanzees at Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest are missing parts of ears, fingers, and toes. Most of these injuries occurred before the chimpanzees came to the sanctuary, though some have been from conflicts that have taken place in their sanctuary home.

Burrito's eye

 

I accept that chimpanzees can be extremely violent. I respect that serious conflict is part of their natural behavior in social groups. That doesn’t always mean that I can just shrug off conflicts and injuries. It can be difficult to process the many facets of  chimpanzees and to know that sometimes one chimpanzee who I care deeply about will hurt another chimpanzee who I care deeply about and that this will happen when I am the one responsible for the health and well being of all of the chimps here.

Maybe this is a little heavy of a blog topic.

It got me thinking about human relationships too. I often find myself explaining minor chimpanzee conflicts, which may seem like a major conflict if you’re not familiar with chimpanzees, as equivalent to a heated human verbal argument. I wonder, though, if that’s not a good comparison. After all, humans are also incredibly violent to one another.

Let’s face it, being a social primate is not that easy. We gain a lot with our social relationships, but we still have competing interests that have to be worked out one way or another; and then sometimes we’re just in a bad mood.

A recent non-invasive study of a wild population of chimpanzees was just published that found an increase in the hormone oxytocin during conflicts. Oxytocin, sometimes referred to as the “love hormone,” is perhaps most known for studies that have shown surges of the chemical in human and other animal mothers when they are with their newborns, and it’s thought to intensify the mother-infant bond. Clearly, the full extent of what oxytocin does and when it is produced is expanding. The theory put forth in this article and others about the increase of oxytocin during conflicts is that it bonds chimpanzees to their group and against a common adversary.

Perhaps the oxytocin-surge aids in the post-conflict bonding that happens with chimpanzees as well. Reconciliation is at least as important as the conflicts themselves in chimpanzees – they generally come together within minutes of a conflict ending in pairs or groups and inspect each other and groom.

Perhaps the immediate reconciliation aspect of fighting is the lesson that humans really could take from chimpanzees.

 

As I said above, we’ve covered the topics of aggression, conflict, violence, and reconciliation of chimpanzees  in other posts before. Here are a few past blog posts if you are interested in more perspectives on these topics:

Full Spectrum Chimpanzees

Conflict

Conflict and Reassurance

Conflict and Reconciliation

Reassurance

The True Nature of Chimpanzees

 

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Balance

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Chimpanzees have a well-deserved reputation for being aggressive. They fight over food, over sex, and over territory. They fight for dominance and out of jealousy.

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Sometimes I don’t think they even know why they are fighting – some fights among the seven end with all of them standing in a circle, screaming and looking around at each other as if to see if anyone else remembers what they are fighting about.

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But as violent as chimps may be, fights are relatively infrequent. They are much more likely to be hugging,

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and kissing,

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and grooming,

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and holding hands (and feet).

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I used to think it was strange that animals capable of such extreme violence could be so tender and gentle. But I’m beginning to think it’s precisely because they are so violent that they are also so tender and gentle. A society with that level of aggression would not last long without an equally powerful force holding it together.

Violence

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Recently, an infant chimpanzee at the L.A. Zoo was killed by an adult member of the troop in full view of zoo visitors. A few days later, a student volunteering at the Chimp Eden sanctuary in South Africa was pulled into an enclosure and attacked by two adult male chimpanzees. Both incidents served as startling reminders of the capacity for violence in our closest relatives and have left many people wondering what makes chimpanzees commit such severe acts of aggression.

Unfortunately, while incidents like these are rare, they are not abnormal. Put simply, violence is a fact of life in chimpanzee society. While males typically grab all the attention with their aggressive dominance struggles and their lethal intergroup raids, females also kill on occasion, with infants and other adult females being their most likely victims. In chimpanzee communities, severe aggression can be a means to reduce or prevent resource competition. This can result in the killing of members of other communities, as well as immigrant females and even infants within the troop. In some cases, the killing of an infant can increase mating opportunities for males. For instance, if a female gives birth, she will not enter estrus for another four to five years while she nurses and raises her new child. If that child dies, however, she will quickly become receptive again. Thus, there can be an incentive for a male who is not the parent to kill the infant so that he can mate with the mother (this is one reason primatologists believe that females may try to confuse paternity).

Violent behavior can serve many functions in chimpanzee society. What functions did these incidents at the L.A. Zoo and Chimp Eden serve? Honestly, we don’t know. It’s much easier to offer an evolutionary explanation for why violence exists in general than it is to explain specific acts.

As caregivers for captive chimpanzees, we witness aggressive behavior on a daily basis. Sometimes the motivation behind it is clear; other times we are left scratching our heads. The way I think about it is this: evolution has endowed chimpanzees with certain tendencies for aggressive behavior, but it does not control how those tendencies are applied. Aggression towards non-group members in the wild can help chimpanzees defend territory and the resources located therein. But that same aggressive tendency can also result in an attack on the very people trying to care for them in captivity.

All we really know is that violence in chimpanzees is not an aberration, nor is it all they are capable of. In fact, one of the reasons why we might be uncomfortable with chimpanzee violence is that it hits a little too close to home. To be sure, aggression in chimpanzees is shocking in its sheer physicality – teeth and fists instead of knives and guns. But even though chimpanzees exhibit higher rates of aggression overall, rates of lethal violence in chimpanzees are similar to those in some human societies. In some ways, we are more alike than we’d like to believe.