War, beyond homo sapiens: Peace eludes chimpanzees as well

In 1970, when Edwin Starr first sang “War, what is good for?”, the question was a rhetorical one. In 2026, it is, perhaps, less so. In the current era of conflict, every party has their sights on the moral high ground. The 21st-century Homo sapiens is a species so divided that it cannot agree on an answer to Starr’s question. Could it lie with our closest evolutionary cousins?

The Ngogo chimpanzee troop at Uganda’s Kibale National Park is one of the largest in the wild and also the most studied. At its peak, the group consisted of around 200 individuals who loved, ate, and quarrelled but did not go to war for decades. That began to change around eight years ago. And last week, researchers declared that factions were engaged in a deadly civil war. At first, the more dominant faction had the upper hand, but then others became more lethal and violent. A community that once lived in harmony for decades has seen 28 deaths, including nine infants (that’s over 10 per cent of the population) over imaginary lines in the sand.

Researchers who have observed the Ngogo chimpanzees — many are minor celebrities after the Netflix documentary Chimp Empire featuring the troop became a global hit — are still working to pinpoint the exact causes of the war. But they do know that friendship, interaction, and play help mute aggression. Perhaps there’s a lesson in that. In the meantime, there’s the rest of the song. “War, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing.”