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... ther to be alone with her infant and gang up on her. In three years from 1974 to 1976 only a single infant in the Kasakela community had lived for more than one month. Finally, when Passion gave birth again to a third child, and Pom also gave birth, the extraordinary cannibalistic infant killing came to an end (Goodall, 1979: 619).
Chimpanzees have been studied in the Mahale Mountains National Park for 25 years. The study group, M-group, consisting of about 90 chimpanzees, has been monitored for 15 years. "Cases reported from Mahale, Tanzania, are of special interest because adult males kill and eat those infants that not only belong to the same community but are likely to be their own offspring" (Turner 1992: 151). On October 3, 1989, a case of within-group infanticide among Mahale T. As, M. Nakamura and two cameramen of a video team of ANC Productions Inc.
from Tokyo, and R. Nyundo of the Mahale Mountains Wildlife Research Centre succeeded in shooting most of the important scenes of the infanticide and cannibalism" (Nishida, 1992: 152). This is an example of the flagrant cannibalism and infanticide witnessed based on their memos and videotape. During a chimpanzee group feeding period that had gone unsuccessfully.
Kalunde a 2 nd-ranking male walked up to and snatched a six-month old infant baby boy from the hands of its mother Mirinda. Kalunde ran with the infant on his belly with Mirinda chasing after him screaming. Kalunde then hid in some vegetation until two other males Site and Lukaja found him and wanted to take the infant away from him. Lukaja finally won a tug of war for the infant between the two other males and handed it over to Ntologi the alpha male. Ntologi, who then dragged, tossed, and slapped it against the ground climbed a tree with the infant in his mouth. He waved it in the air, and finally killed it by biting it on the face.
Then he proceeded to eat the infant sharing the meat with the other chimps (Nishida, 1992: 152). It is strange because this sort of cannibalistic behavior is exactly like a group of chimpanzees feeding on the meat of any mammals dead carcass. Unfortunately, in this case though, it was the meat of a dead chimpanzee infant. Nevertheless, after the infanticide, Mirinda was observed to mate with Ntologi as well as Kalunde (Nishida, 1992: 153).
Even though both these males assisted in the killing of her first infant. Another example of this fierce and barbaric activity happened again on "July 24, 1990, M. B. Kasagula, a research assistant, observed five adult males including Ntologi excitedly displaying" (Nishida, 1992: 153). Ntologi had his hand on a 5 -month-old male infant of Betty's. The infant was still alive.
Ntologi began to bite on the infants' fingers and then struck the infant against a tree trunk, and also dragged it on the ground as he displayed. As a result the infant was killed (Nishida, 1992: 153). Once again, Ntologi shared the remains with ten adult females and eight males. Three hours later the chimpanzees were still eating the carcass (Nishida, 1992: 153).
Other than the two examples illustrated thus far, there were also five other cases of Mahale Mountain within-group infanticides that were analyzed. Firstly, all the victims of all seven cases were small male infants below 1 year of age (Hamai, 1992: 155). Secondly, infanticide also occurred mostly in the morning during an intensive feeding period (Hamai, 1992: 155). On six of the seven occasions, the captors of the infants were alpha or beta males (Hamai, 1992: 155). Group attacks were observed in at least three cases. In all infanticide cases the mother persistently tried to recover her infant from the adult males so long as it was still alive.
However, an infant was only recovered by its mother once (Hamai, 1992: 157). Infants were killed while being eaten in all cases (Nishida 1992: 157). "What appeared common in cannibalism but uncommon in predation was that consumption of meat took a long time ( 3 hr) and that the carcass-holder changed frequently, considering the prey size and the number of consumers" (Hamai, 1992: 158). In all cases of cannibalism, many chimps ate and shared the meat by recovering scraps. There was always more than four adult male cannibals and the mother has never been seen to eat meat from the carcass of her own offspring (Nishida, 1992: 158).
The Mahale Mountain study provided an in-depth analysis on how the chimpanzees reacted during and after their cannibalistic behavior. There are several hypotheses explaining infanticide within a group of chimpanzees. One of these being the male-male competition hypotheses. Nishida and Hiraiwa-Hasegawa (1985) suggested that males of one clique destroy infants of females who associated with males of a rival clique (Hamai, 1992: 159). Spiderman (1990) proposed that infanticide functions as a kind of display to fortify male social status, or "to increase control over the attention of others" (Hamai 1992: 159). Another idea was Kawanaka's (1981) that infanticide was an "elimination of the product of incest" (Hamai 1992: 159).
Some believe that the function of infanticide is to correct a females promiscuous habit and "coerce her into more restrictive mating relationships with adult males, and especially with high ranking males" (Hamai, 1992: 159). What is interesting in all of these examples of chimpanzee infanticide is as soon as a chimpanzee male or female (Passion & Pom) got their hands on an infant, the chimps surrounding them would suddenly become excited and want it themselves as if the infant was just a piece of meat even though it was still alive. In conclusion, there has been no evidence revealing why chimpanzees act and behave in this cannibalistic fashion. There are many theories and ideas but like the theory of evolution there is no one clear answer.
Being the closest living relative to the human being, chimpanzees exhibit complicated and intricate behavior due to their advanced brains (Zuckerman, 1932: 171). This paper has revealed that chimpanzees are creatures of great extremes: aggressive one moment, peaceful the next. This gruesome violent behavior can actually be linked to a similarity with human beings. It is widely accepted in the scientific community that chimpanzees are the closest human relatives we have.
If we are indeed superior to these primates, does it not stand to reason that humans should be able to learn from this violence and avoid it? Jane Goodall, in her article labeled, "Life and Death at Gombe" draws a similar conclusion: It is sobering that our new awareness of chimpanzee violence compels us to acknowledge that these ape cousins of ours are even more similar to humans than we thought before. Bibliography: Goodall, Jane. 1992 Unusual Violence in the Overthrow of an Alpha Male Chimpanzee at Gombe. In, Nishida, W. C.
McGrew, P. Marler, M. Pickford, and F. B. M. de Waal, eds. , Topics in Primatology, Volume 1, Human Origins, pp. 131 - 142.
Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press. Goodall, Jane. 1986 The Chimpanzees of Gombe. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass Reynolds, Vernon, 1967. The Apes.
New York, NY: E. P. Dutton. Series, K. B. 1992. Faces in the Forest: The Endangered Muriqui Monkeys of Brazil.
Oxford University Press, Oxford. Hamai, M. , T. Nishida, H. Takasaki & L.
A. Turner, 1992. New records of within-group infanticide and cannibalism in wild chimpanzees. Primates, 33: 151 - 162. Wrangham, R. W.
and E. van Zinnicq Bergmann-Rss. 1990. Rates of predation on mammals by Gombe chimpanzees, 1972 - 1975. Primates 31: 157 - 170.
Zuckerman, Solly, 1932. The Social Life of Monkeys ad Apes. London, UK: Routledge Kegan Paul.
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