Gorilla vs. Chimpanzee: Who Wins in Their Battle and Why Do They Fight?

For many years, chimps and gorillas have coexisted peacefully. Although they occasionally murder children or one another in one-on-one conflicts, ganging up on solitary males and engaging in interspecies warfare is not widespread.

In gigantic primates, the "vicious act of aggression" in gigantic primates has been documented before, but such deadly confrontations are incredibly unusual. Discover Magazine said researchers discovered that chimps outnumbered gorillas and started fights in two consecutive conflicts in Gabon's Loango National Park in 2019.

In February of that year, researchers from Osnabrück University and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany were stunned to see a nearly hour-long brawl between two groups. The chimps abducted the newborn gorilla and battered it to death during the almost hour-long battle between the two groups.

Researchers were even more stunned when the same occurred again in December. This time, 27 chimps faced off against seven gorillas in a 79-minute battle that ended ith the death of another innocent newborn gorilla. It's unclear if the same chimps were engaged in the previous incident.

"Our observations provide the first evidence that the presence of chimpanzees can have a lethal impact on gorillas," researcher and primatologist Tobias Deschner told ScienceAlert. "We now want to investigate the factors triggering these surprisingly aggressive interactions."

Why Gorillas and Chimpanzees Fight

While these apes have coexisted for so long and shared resources in their environment, a recent study published in the journal Scientific Reports suggests that deadly assaults by chimps and gorillas in the wild may be motivated by resource scarcity and competitiveness. Fighting for food and territory may have become automatic for the monkeys.

"We are only at the beginning to understand the effects of competition on interactions between the two great ape species in Loango," says Simone Pika in a statement.

According to The Atlantic, this incidence of multi-male, multi-female wild mountain gorillas was also recorded in 2014. A fleeing gorilla named Inshuti was assaulted by a crowd of 25 other gorillas near Rwanda's Karisoke Research Center.

Stacy Rosenbaum of the University of Chicago, who watched the attack and has spent a lot of time monitoring animals, said it was one of the most stunning things the witness has ever seen.

There appears to be no proof of premeditation, according to Rosenbaum.

Not a Single Incident

Even in the absence of resource stress, gorillas expanded their population to multi-male groups, suggesting that social structure is a crucial predictor of coalitionary aggressiveness. While it has been identified as a major influence, observations are restricted to select regions to ensure that they are still given the space and respect they need in their natural environment.

It's also likely that the murders between these two species are more common than the records indicate. However, they were only noticed when things like fruit were scarce at times of the year.

According to the researchers, there is still much to learn about our closest living ancestors, and Loango National Park, with its distinctive mosaic environment, is an ideal location to do so. Nonetheless, this interspecies aggression must be closely monitored, or else a full-fledged monkey war may become more widespread in the future.

Difference Between Chimpanzee and Gorilla

Gorillas are significantly larger and heavier than chimps, AtoZ Animals said. Chimpanzees are 3-5 feet tall and weigh 50-150 pounds on average, whereas gorillas are 3-6 feet tall and weigh 200-500 pounds. Some gorillas can weigh considerably more than this, far more than any chimp can ever be!

Chimpanzees and gorillas have quite diverse physical looks. Male gorillas, unlike chimps, have coarse dark hair that becomes silver as they age, but chimps do not. Gorillas have black skin on their faces and hands, whereas chimps have pink or tan skin on their palms and faces. In comparison to the wide shoulders of the ordinary gorilla, the average chimp is significantly slimmer.

You can also distinguish between a chimp and a gorilla by looking at their ears. Gorillas have small ears near the rear of their skull, but chimps have huge ears on the sides of their heads, similar to humans. Because of their head shape and size, gorillas are truly unusual.

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