Why chimpanzees attack

If you go to a zoo and look at chimps, it takes your breath away because they are so big and strong. Paleoanthropologist Alan Walker of Penn State University thinks that even if a human and a chimp were somehow evenly matched in size, chimpanzees wind up using all of their muscle strength, whereas humans tend to hold back. Relative to body mass, chimpanzees have less gray matter in their spinal cords than humans have.

This matter contains large numbers of nerve cells that connect to muscle fibers and regulate muscle movement. The finely tuned motor system in humans gives us the ability to do things like make complex tools, throw accurately and manipulate small objects. Yet another possible factor in the Chimp Eden attack is that the primates housed there were rescued from the illegal pet and bushmeat trades, as well as from the entertainment industry.

In short, these primates were previously abused by humans and might be more inclined to become defensive. David Oosthuizen, executive director of Chimp Eden, said that over those 12 years, the sanctuary has maintained the standards of care, safety and conservation required to be part of the PASA. IE 11 is not supported. Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player. The second event happened at the start of a suspected territorial boundary patrol," the study said.

While there was no indication of consumption of the dead gorilla infant in the first encounter, the infant in the second encounter was almost entirely consumed by one adult chimpanzee female," according to the study. According to the researchers the inter-species violence could have been caused by hunting and food competition. Watch Live. Lethal chimpanzee attacks on gorillas observed for first time Researchers are unsure whether the attacks came as a result of competition for food or for other reasons, and are continuing to investigate.

Fill 2 Copy 11 Created with Sketch. Males are slightly bigger than females. A male can weigh up to about lbs. Chimps are stronger than humans, despite being smaller. In fact, they are about 1. These fast-twitch muscle fibers enable chimps to outperform people in tasks such as pulling and jumping. Humans evolved to have more slow-twitch muscle fibers that are better for endurance and traveling long distances.

Related: Building blocks of language evolved before humans split from chimps and monkeys. Chimpanzees mainly eat fruit and leaves. However, their diet varies depending on where they live and the seasonal availability of food. Chimps are omnivores, like humans, so they will also eat some meat. Their diet includes insects and mammals, such as monkeys and bushbuck antelope, according to the Jane Goodall Institute UK.

Related: Chimps seen sucking brains from monkeys' heads. Chimpanzees are highly intelligent animals and use various methods to find their food. They have been observed using more tools than any other animal on the planet except for humans. Their use of tools includes holding rocks to hammer open nuts, stripping leaves off twigs to gather termites from inside termite mounds and crushing leaves to use as sponges for cleaning themselves, according to ADW.

Wild chimpanzees are usually fearful of humans and will keep their distance. However, there have been recorded incidents of chimpanzees attacking and killing people.

This usually happens when humans move into and destroy chimpanzee habitats, reducing their access to food.

Chimpanzees may then take to stealing unprotected human food, such as crops, and in the process become more confident around humans. Chimpanzees have attacked more than 20 people in the Western Region of Uganda over the past 20 years and killed at least three human infants since , National Geographic reported in Chimpanzees typically direct their aggressive and sometimes predatory behavior toward children because the animals are more fearful of larger human adults, especially men, according to National Geographic.

Chimps have also snatched and killed human babies. Most of the time these are isolated and seemingly reckless attacks by individual chimps, but one chimpanzee in the s killed seven children before he was killed by humans, National Geographic reported. Captive or pet chimpanzees attack people far more often than their wild kin, because they can lose their fear of people altogether.

During attacks, chimps will target a person's face, hands, feet and genitals. The Jane Goodall Institute UK noted that pet chimpanzees are destructive and too dangerous to be kept as part of the family, and that it is difficult to keep them stimulated and satisfied in a human environment.

Chimpanzees are highly social animals and live in communities of between 10 and individuals, according to the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany. They live in fusion-fission societies where the community breaks up into small subgroups fission that travel separately and sometimes come together fusion.