KAI HAYES STONE

The monkey gang war

It’s 1973 and everything is good, nobody has never been mean to each other and there have been no wars up to this point. Especially in Gombe National Park where a civilised and friendly group of monkeys are unified and known as the Kasakela community. I’m sure this will last and nothing will go wrong…

It’s 1974 and things have gone wrong.

After a period of conflict within The Kasakela tribe, they ended up splitting into separate groups, with one being the Keasela tribe and the other the Kahama. The Keasela tribe is still larger compared to the Kahama tribe, which only contains 6 male members. 

The leaders are the brothers ​​Hugh and Charlie, who should have probably pickled some more intimidating names if they didn’t want anyone to mess with them. Imagine having to fight monkeys named Deathblade and Dynamite, nobody would mess with them. The other males in this tribe were called Godi, De, Goliath, and a lil baby boy monkey named Sniff. 

The War would begin On january 7th 1974, when first blood was spilt and then drank because a group of 6 monkeys from the keasala tribe ambushed godi while he was just feeding on a tree, killing him and then drinking blood from his skull. Monkeys really are just like humans, they even have psychopathic serial killer tendencies!

After killing godi, the chimpanzees celebrated intensely, by screaming, jumping up and down and dragging branches around. 

You know how in formula 1 they celebrate with $5000 bottles of champagne? I think I’d prefer it if they celebrated wins by screaming and dragging tree branches around, it sounds more fun.

These monkeys then continued to attack the kahama tribe, choke slamming them and inflicting severe damage until they died. First they killed de, and then the old monkey goliath.

The kahama tribe had taken some heavy losses. Now there were only 3 monkeys in the tribe,  charlie, willy wally and young sniff who remained. Charlie crouched down onto the ground, distraught. He then looked to the bodies of his fallen comrades with a single tear falling from his eye, as this happened he swore to take vengeance on the monkeys who took everything from him. 

He was then killed too. And then the other 2 monkeys went missing or died.

What’s that?

 Ahhh because of the way I was speaking you thought this was an underdog comeback story. You idiot, no. This is real life, he was brutally murdered just like the rest of the monkeys.. No really though it is very sad that the monkeys were mean they always seem so kind and happy.

The violence exhibited by the monkeys also shocked the researcher who documented the whole conflict – Jane Goodall. who I assume was just standing around watching the monkeys tear each other limb from limb and then periodically write down something like “oooh the monkey i named james just got roundhouse kicked by the monkey i named phillip”

Later recounting her witnessing of these events, she wrote, quote “For several years I struggled to come to terms with this new knowledge. Often when I woke in the night, horrific pictures sprang unbidden to my mind—Satan [one of the apes], cupping his hand below Sniff’s chin to drink the blood that welled from a great wound on his face;”

It’s quite funny that Goodall named one of the chimps satan and then was like OMG WHOA SATAN WAS EVIL ALL ALONG??? HOW COULD I HAVE SEEN THIS COMING!!

This all showed that chimpanzees were extremely capable of being very violent and aggressive to members of their own species, a new development that had not been seen before. The whole event is actually pretty horrific when the details of how brutal the murders were are put into detail.

This conflict should be remembered alongside world war 1 and world war 2 as they all had about the same duration of between 4-6 years 

[4 years, 4 years and 6 years ]

The only difference is that this war had much more severe losses

-with 6 monkeys dying in the Gombe chimpanzee war

Whereas only millions of humans lives were lost in the world wars

but there is a moral to this story, for as a wise monkey once said, “ooh ohh ah ah.”