10 ms·

> "Whether this behavior is due to competition for food or to the decline of the rainforest's productivity caused by climate change will now be investigated in

by varenc 5y ago

> "Whether this behavior is due to competition for food or to the decline of the rainforest's productivity caused by climate change will now be investigated in more detail." Declaring the cause must be food competition or climate change seems a bit hasty? These are complex social animals. Given this is the only attack ever observed, it seems possible to me that there are a myriad of plausible one-off explanations. Perhaps a particular chimp or gorilla was having a really bad day and just went out looking for a fight.

diognesofsinope 5y ago
They've turned climate change into the new boogeyman, which is a shame since it's an important issue.
- denkmoon 5y ago
  and why is it an important issue? In part because of the ecological stresses it causes, which results in less supply of resources in a given ecological niche. Seems entirely reasonable to hypothesise the cause of aggression being related to this. That's not something they tested, merely a proposed hypothesis.
  - robbedpeter 5y ago
    It's a convenient hypothesis, given the ubiquity of climate change impacts, but also a lazy one, like blaming the aggression on something equally as prevalent and relevant to the situation, like chimp genetics. The hypothesis is untestable absent some other specific assertions, and therefore unscientific.
    - j_wtf_all_taken 5y ago
      And you have enough knowledge on the subject matter so this can be seen as an educated guess, or are you just throwing some good-knowing words around to see what sticks?
    - denkmoon 5y ago
      Testability and a better understanding of how resource limitations impact intraspecific competition is one of the big questions of community ecology. Sorry, sometimes the convenient hypothesis is a good one. It's just hard to test, since we cannot spin up Earth 2. That's one of the hard parts of ecology.
- skocznymroczny 5y ago
  Give it few more weeks of research and they'll blame it on covid.
  - pelasaco 5y ago
    Maybe the Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro...
    - j_wtf_all_taken 5y ago
      Well he IS a wild chimp attacking people, right? Sorry chimps, that was mean.
  - j_wtf_all_taken 5y ago
    Give it five minutes and you'll contradict yourself.
- getlawgdon 5y ago
  climate change is having wide and radically accelerating impacts. I'm certain the scientists have good insights into why it might be a factor in this event. much more concerning is the knee-jerk ignorance about climate change among lay audiences who are repeatedly putting their hands over their eyes and ears.
  - woofie11 5y ago
    The two are connected. Scientists lying about climate change, especially in obvious contexts like this one, makes people see that scientists are not to be trusted. It's the boy who cried wolf.
    - j_wtf_all_taken 5y ago
      Except you're the one who's lying ...? Weird.
      - woofie11 5y ago
        Can you please point to where I'm lying? NY Times has been running a series of articles blaming every fire and extreme weather event on climate change. This does two things: 1. Convinces liberals of the coming apocalypse of climate change, since it aligns with their views. 2. Convinces conservatives that the climate change folks are lying, since there are several logical steps missing, and it doesn't align with their views. I'm sure some of those events are related to climate change. I'm sure some aren't. I don't think we really know which is which. The problem with using (transparently) bad logic to get to a correct conclusion is that people no longer trust you. If you look at conservative media, they point to (now obviously wrong) predictions from the eighties, where citations and reporting would go to the most extreme predictions. It's really hard to convince someone of something after they've been lied to multiple times.
subroutine 5y ago
Indeed. Chimps will eat gorilla infants. So if the attack was over a scarcity of food resources you'd expect the killed infant to be eaten. This was only observed in 1/2 the encounters... > Between 2014 and 2018, we observed nine direct interactions between individuals of the Rekambo community and unhabituated gorillas (N=9; see Fig. 1). These events were always peaceful, and occasionally involved co-feeding in fruiting trees (N=2). In 2019 however, we observed two encounters resulting, in both cases, in coalitionary lethal attacks. The first encounter involved a party of 27 chimpanzees and a group of five gorillas. The second involved a party of 27 chimpanzees and a group of seven gorillas (see Table 1, and video clips 1 and 2 in the SA). The first event occurred after a territorial patrol during which the males made a deep incur- sion into a neighbouring chimpanzee territory. The second event happened at the start of a suspected territorial boundary patrol. Both events took place on the outer boundaries of the Rekambo territory (see Fig. 1). The main aggressors in both events were adult male chimpanzees (for details of involvement see Table 1). The two encounters lasted 52 and 79 min, respectively, involved both contact and non-contact aggressions and coalitionary displays from chimpanzees towards gorillas. The gorillas counter attacked and defended themselves using contact aggressions, displays and threat gestures. During the first encounter the silverback was present for 14 min, whilst in the second encounter the silverback was present for 10 min. The first encounter resulted in one dead gorilla infant and three injured chimpanzees; the second resulted in one dead gorilla infant. 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. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-93829-x.pdf https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-93829-x.pdf
- kadoban 5y ago
  The non-eating attack resulted in chimpanzee injuries. They very well could have been chased away and/or too busy nursing injuries.
  - subroutine 5y ago
    I'm anthropomorphizing but it doesnt seem very primate-like not to enjoy the spoils of a hard won victory.
parineum 5y ago
That phrasing struck me as well. It's a classic false-dichotomy. It's funny to me to see it so prominent in what appears to be a fairly professional site.
smhost 5y ago
> Perhaps a particular chimp or gorilla was having a really bad day and just went out looking for a fight. This doesn't necessarily contradict the food competition or climate change hypothesis. To the individual ape it might seem that he's just having a bad day, but then you could look at weather/food data and compare it to incidence of violence and see a causal relation. It would actually be surprising if those things didn't affect ape behavior.
- hutzlibu 5y ago
  I know many humans who get very grumpy on an empty stomach.
  - j_wtf_all_taken 5y ago
    How is the behavior of some random humans relevant here?
    - hutzlibu 5y ago
      That hunger drives aggression? In monkey as in humans?
gchamonlive 5y ago
They are not declaring that. The proposed cause is a thesis that will be investigated further and could very well be disproven. I don't see what's wrong with that.
- krona 5y ago
  I'm not sure how the thesis could possibly be disproven. Interviews with the apes?
  - j_wtf_all_taken 5y ago
    So because you don't know, it is impossible?
meristohm 5y ago
Does writing off climate change as a factor seem a bit hasty? Even if it’s just a one-off, terrible-horrible-no-good-very-bad-day event, one effect of changes in average local weather might be that many individuals are more stressed.
jansan 5y ago
If you want public funding in Germany, you better make sure that you cover either diversity or climate change with your research. Not sure how they missed the opportunity to give "lack of group diversity" as a possible reason for the attack.
- j_wtf_all_taken 5y ago
  Because they don't want to randomly attack people for no reason, other than you?
raffraffraff 5y ago
Makes your wonder why Neanderthals only survived as fragments in our DNA.
bonoboTP 5y ago
You have to tie your research to the popular causes of the day. It would a bit far-fetched to tie it to gender and underrepresented minorities or online misinformation or covid, so the nearest possible "serious issue of our time" is climate change.
- pelasaco 5y ago
  Are you sure? "the infant in the second encounter was almost entirely consumed by one adult chimpanzee female." I see a gender assumption here.. we have to check her Twitter to see if it's she/her or they/them..
- getlawgdon 5y ago
  it's simply a hypothesis formed by experts. you're doing a disservice to yourself and the general purpose of acience by denigrating the concept this way.
  - woofie11 5y ago
    When the experts are all white liberal progressives competing for citations and news coverage, you're doing science a disservice by not having a critical read....
    - j_wtf_all_taken 5y ago
      Yeah and when its commenters throwing around arguments that just don't apply here they're doing everyone a disservice.
- lewispollard 5y ago
  What on earth has happened to HN comments over the last couple of months? Every post I've opened today has had this same kind of "half-joking-but-not-really SJWs are bad" comment on something completely unrelated.
  - sidenote 5y ago
YeGoblynQueenne 5y ago
>> Declaring the cause must be food competition or climate change seems a bit hasty? It's not a declaration, but a hypothesis that attempts to explain the observations according to prior knowledge. It "will now be investigated in more detail" to try and disprove it. That's bog standard scientific work. What's hasty is the easy dismissal of the opinion of experts on a subject most commenters here are probably unfamliar with (interspecies interactions between non-human primates) and the attemps to find an ulterior motive of some kind of political nature, in comments in this thread. When did HN become so anti-science?
- AmericanChopper 5y ago
  You don’t need any expertise at all to notice that there might be more than two possible explanations for this thing that has now been observed a total of one times.
  - YeGoblynQueenne 5y ago
    You need expertise to know whether an explanation is likely or not with respect to prior knowledge. Specifically, expertise depends on having the necessary prior knowledge to know whether a hypothesis is likely or not.
- woofie11 5y ago
  Science is a process. HN isn't anti-science. The scientific establishment is a group of people in various organizational structures and alliances. I'm part of that establishment, and I can say that it lies, exaggerates, and has become increasingly untrustworthy in the past decade or two: - The easiest way to get ahead in the scientific establishment is to fabricate politically-motivated results. - Competition is intense, and the "hard" way is becoming impossible. My general advice is to read source data -- even there with a large grain of salt -- but to definitely not trust "expert" conclusions. One of the easiest ways to have "impact" is to write newsworthy conclusions weakly supported by evidence. It's not technically academic fraud, and gives you the visibility you need for academic job offers. Science isn't about authority or expertise. It's about evidence, critical thinking, and the scientific process. If you believe science is "opinion of experts," you're doing it wrong.
causi 5y ago
Yes, given the headline I expected a coordinated attack that wiped out an entire group of gorillas, not a couple of skirmishes. Chimpanzees will attack humans, including eating human children. I don't see why small encounters that result in one or two deaths would be totally unexpected.
- asymmetric 5y ago
  > Chimpanzees will attack humans, including eating human children. Do you have a source for this?
  - sidenote 5y ago
    This is very well known information. Sources are easily available on the news source of your choice. https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/animals/2019/11/i-am-scared-all-time-chimps-and-people-are-clashing-rural-uganda https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/animals/2019/11/i-am-sc... https://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/27/magazine/hunting-a-chimp-on-a-killing-spree.html https://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/27/magazine/hunting-a-chimp-...
    - j_wtf_all_taken 5y ago
      The first sentence is: "Forest clearing has forced hungry chimps to raid villagers’ crops." So it doesn't seem that's their natural behavior. So how's that relevant? Oh wait it its, just exactly the opposite of what you said! Nice.
      - sidenote 5y ago
        Did I mention natural behavior? Did the comment I responded to mention natural behavior? How is natural behavior relevant to the discussion between OP and I? What is the point that you are arguing and why are you taking it up with me? Further, how are you defining natural behavior? Can natural behavior change over time, in response to external stimulus?
        5y ago
MrBuddyCasino 5y ago
> "caused by climate change" Can be translated to "we know this is a good word to say to get research money, so we say it" in this context.
- j_wtf_all_taken 5y ago
  Yeah and you don't know how the research organization works that produced that research, so ...
  - klyrs 5y ago
    I appreciate that you're trying to combat the anti-science shallow/kneejerk critiques, but this is not the way. You're feeding trolls by the handful. Here, you're jumping to conclusions just to dunk on somebody. Please pick your battles more carefully so you can be more deliberate as you wage them.
    - j_wtf_all_taken 5y ago
      But its true? This research organization doesn't have to beg for short-term or 3rd party research money? Also, I'm really pissed and also I'm kind of convinced that its too late anyways to try to convince someone who says stuff like that that they're not right. The only thing that can still be done is trying to keep more people from getting sucked into that black hole. The best way to do this seems to be to de-platform these people. The 2nd best way? No idea. Did I mention I'm pissed? I mean, do you really believe well-researched, weighted, deliberate, thought-through arguments still help? Wouldn't climate science then have succeeded in convincing people? Maybe 20, 30 years ago. But then some people decided to start systematically lying instead of facing reality and lots of people decided to believe those lies and not face reality, and here we are.
      - klyrs 5y ago
        > Also, I'm really pissed and also I'm kind of convinced that its too late anyways to try to convince someone who says stuff like that that they're not right. Look, I'm not arguing with you here. You're admittedly pissed. Please take a breather. This approach can only bolster confirmation bias for folks who think that science is just another religion with fanatical adherents. There's a lot of writing about (including several studies) how to talk to people with extreme / conspiratorial / fact-resistant beliefs. Please read up.
j_wtf_all_taken 5y ago
> Perhaps a particular chimp or gorilla was having a really bad day and just went out looking for a fight. Do chimps and gorillas do such things?
sidenote 5y ago
The article that is linked reads "observations", plural.
morpheos137 5y ago
Is there any evidence of decline of this forest's productivity?
ASalazarMX 5y ago
> The increased food competition may also be caused by the more recent phenomenon of climate change and a collapse in fruit availability as observed in other tropical forests in Gabon. It seems like an educated guess.

by varenc 5y ago

diognesofsinope 5y ago

They've turned climate change into the new boogeyman, which is a shame since it's an important issue.

denkmoon 5y ago
and why is it an important issue? In part because of the ecological stresses it causes, which results in less supply of resources in a given ecological niche. Seems entirely reasonable to hypothesise the cause of aggression being related to this. That's not something they tested, merely a proposed hypothesis.
- robbedpeter 5y ago
  It's a convenient hypothesis, given the ubiquity of climate change impacts, but also a lazy one, like blaming the aggression on something equally as prevalent and relevant to the situation, like chimp genetics. The hypothesis is untestable absent some other specific assertions, and therefore unscientific.
  - j_wtf_all_taken 5y ago
    And you have enough knowledge on the subject matter so this can be seen as an educated guess, or are you just throwing some good-knowing words around to see what sticks?
  - denkmoon 5y ago
    Testability and a better understanding of how resource limitations impact intraspecific competition is one of the big questions of community ecology. Sorry, sometimes the convenient hypothesis is a good one. It's just hard to test, since we cannot spin up Earth 2. That's one of the hard parts of ecology.
skocznymroczny 5y ago
Give it few more weeks of research and they'll blame it on covid.
- pelasaco 5y ago
  Maybe the Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro...
  - j_wtf_all_taken 5y ago
    Well he IS a wild chimp attacking people, right? Sorry chimps, that was mean.
- j_wtf_all_taken 5y ago
  Give it five minutes and you'll contradict yourself.
getlawgdon 5y ago
climate change is having wide and radically accelerating impacts. I'm certain the scientists have good insights into why it might be a factor in this event. much more concerning is the knee-jerk ignorance about climate change among lay audiences who are repeatedly putting their hands over their eyes and ears.
- woofie11 5y ago
  The two are connected. Scientists lying about climate change, especially in obvious contexts like this one, makes people see that scientists are not to be trusted. It's the boy who cried wolf.
  - j_wtf_all_taken 5y ago
    Except you're the one who's lying ...? Weird.
    - woofie11 5y ago
      Can you please point to where I'm lying? NY Times has been running a series of articles blaming every fire and extreme weather event on climate change. This does two things: 1. Convinces liberals of the coming apocalypse of climate change, since it aligns with their views. 2. Convinces conservatives that the climate change folks are lying, since there are several logical steps missing, and it doesn't align with their views. I'm sure some of those events are related to climate change. I'm sure some aren't. I don't think we really know which is which. The problem with using (transparently) bad logic to get to a correct conclusion is that people no longer trust you. If you look at conservative media, they point to (now obviously wrong) predictions from the eighties, where citations and reporting would go to the most extreme predictions. It's really hard to convince someone of something after they've been lied to multiple times.

subroutine 5y ago

Indeed. Chimps will eat gorilla infants. So if the attack was over a scarcity of food resources you'd expect the killed infant to be eaten. This was only observed in 1/2 the encounters... > Between 2014 and 2018, we observed nine direct interactions between individuals of the Rekambo community and unhabituated gorillas (N=9; see Fig. 1). These events were always peaceful, and occasionally involved co-feeding in fruiting trees (N=2). In 2019 however, we observed two encounters resulting, in both cases, in coalitionary lethal attacks. The first encounter involved a party of 27 chimpanzees and a group of five gorillas. The second involved a party of 27 chimpanzees and a group of seven gorillas (see Table 1, and video clips 1 and 2 in the SA). The first event occurred after a territorial patrol during which the males made a deep incur- sion into a neighbouring chimpanzee territory. The second event happened at the start of a suspected territorial boundary patrol. Both events took place on the outer boundaries of the Rekambo territory (see Fig. 1). The main aggressors in both events were adult male chimpanzees (for details of involvement see Table 1). The two encounters lasted 52 and 79 min, respectively, involved both contact and non-contact aggressions and coalitionary displays from chimpanzees towards gorillas. The gorillas counter attacked and defended themselves using contact aggressions, displays and threat gestures. During the first encounter the silverback was present for 14 min, whilst in the second encounter the silverback was present for 10 min. The first encounter resulted in one dead gorilla infant and three injured chimpanzees; the second resulted in one dead gorilla infant. 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. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-93829-x.pdf https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-93829-x.pdf

kadoban 5y ago
The non-eating attack resulted in chimpanzee injuries. They very well could have been chased away and/or too busy nursing injuries.
- subroutine 5y ago
  I'm anthropomorphizing but it doesnt seem very primate-like not to enjoy the spoils of a hard won victory.

parineum 5y ago

That phrasing struck me as well. It's a classic false-dichotomy. It's funny to me to see it so prominent in what appears to be a fairly professional site.

smhost 5y ago

> Perhaps a particular chimp or gorilla was having a really bad day and just went out looking for a fight. This doesn't necessarily contradict the food competition or climate change hypothesis. To the individual ape it might seem that he's just having a bad day, but then you could look at weather/food data and compare it to incidence of violence and see a causal relation. It would actually be surprising if those things didn't affect ape behavior.

hutzlibu 5y ago
I know many humans who get very grumpy on an empty stomach.
- j_wtf_all_taken 5y ago
  How is the behavior of some random humans relevant here?
  - hutzlibu 5y ago
    That hunger drives aggression? In monkey as in humans?

gchamonlive 5y ago

They are not declaring that. The proposed cause is a thesis that will be investigated further and could very well be disproven. I don't see what's wrong with that.

krona 5y ago
I'm not sure how the thesis could possibly be disproven. Interviews with the apes?
- j_wtf_all_taken 5y ago
  So because you don't know, it is impossible?

meristohm 5y ago

Does writing off climate change as a factor seem a bit hasty? Even if it’s just a one-off, terrible-horrible-no-good-very-bad-day event, one effect of changes in average local weather might be that many individuals are more stressed.

jansan 5y ago

If you want public funding in Germany, you better make sure that you cover either diversity or climate change with your research. Not sure how they missed the opportunity to give "lack of group diversity" as a possible reason for the attack.

j_wtf_all_taken 5y ago
Because they don't want to randomly attack people for no reason, other than you?

raffraffraff 5y ago

Makes your wonder why Neanderthals only survived as fragments in our DNA.

bonoboTP 5y ago

You have to tie your research to the popular causes of the day. It would a bit far-fetched to tie it to gender and underrepresented minorities or online misinformation or covid, so the nearest possible "serious issue of our time" is climate change.

pelasaco 5y ago
Are you sure? "the infant in the second encounter was almost entirely consumed by one adult chimpanzee female." I see a gender assumption here.. we have to check her Twitter to see if it's she/her or they/them..
getlawgdon 5y ago
it's simply a hypothesis formed by experts. you're doing a disservice to yourself and the general purpose of acience by denigrating the concept this way.
- woofie11 5y ago
  When the experts are all white liberal progressives competing for citations and news coverage, you're doing science a disservice by not having a critical read....
  - j_wtf_all_taken 5y ago
    Yeah and when its commenters throwing around arguments that just don't apply here they're doing everyone a disservice.
lewispollard 5y ago
What on earth has happened to HN comments over the last couple of months? Every post I've opened today has had this same kind of "half-joking-but-not-really SJWs are bad" comment on something completely unrelated.
- sidenote 5y ago

YeGoblynQueenne 5y ago

>> Declaring the cause must be food competition or climate change seems a bit hasty? It's not a declaration, but a hypothesis that attempts to explain the observations according to prior knowledge. It "will now be investigated in more detail" to try and disprove it. That's bog standard scientific work. What's hasty is the easy dismissal of the opinion of experts on a subject most commenters here are probably unfamliar with (interspecies interactions between non-human primates) and the attemps to find an ulterior motive of some kind of political nature, in comments in this thread. When did HN become so anti-science?

AmericanChopper 5y ago
You don’t need any expertise at all to notice that there might be more than two possible explanations for this thing that has now been observed a total of one times.
- YeGoblynQueenne 5y ago
  You need expertise to know whether an explanation is likely or not with respect to prior knowledge. Specifically, expertise depends on having the necessary prior knowledge to know whether a hypothesis is likely or not.
woofie11 5y ago
Science is a process. HN isn't anti-science. The scientific establishment is a group of people in various organizational structures and alliances. I'm part of that establishment, and I can say that it lies, exaggerates, and has become increasingly untrustworthy in the past decade or two: - The easiest way to get ahead in the scientific establishment is to fabricate politically-motivated results. - Competition is intense, and the "hard" way is becoming impossible. My general advice is to read source data -- even there with a large grain of salt -- but to definitely not trust "expert" conclusions. One of the easiest ways to have "impact" is to write newsworthy conclusions weakly supported by evidence. It's not technically academic fraud, and gives you the visibility you need for academic job offers. Science isn't about authority or expertise. It's about evidence, critical thinking, and the scientific process. If you believe science is "opinion of experts," you're doing it wrong.

causi 5y ago

Yes, given the headline I expected a coordinated attack that wiped out an entire group of gorillas, not a couple of skirmishes. Chimpanzees will attack humans, including eating human children. I don't see why small encounters that result in one or two deaths would be totally unexpected.

asymmetric 5y ago
> Chimpanzees will attack humans, including eating human children. Do you have a source for this?
- sidenote 5y ago
  This is very well known information. Sources are easily available on the news source of your choice. https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/animals/2019/11/i-am-scared-all-time-chimps-and-people-are-clashing-rural-uganda https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/animals/2019/11/i-am-sc... https://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/27/magazine/hunting-a-chimp-on-a-killing-spree.html https://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/27/magazine/hunting-a-chimp-...
  - j_wtf_all_taken 5y ago
    The first sentence is: "Forest clearing has forced hungry chimps to raid villagers’ crops." So it doesn't seem that's their natural behavior. So how's that relevant? Oh wait it its, just exactly the opposite of what you said! Nice.
    - sidenote 5y ago
      Did I mention natural behavior? Did the comment I responded to mention natural behavior? How is natural behavior relevant to the discussion between OP and I? What is the point that you are arguing and why are you taking it up with me? Further, how are you defining natural behavior? Can natural behavior change over time, in response to external stimulus?
      - 5y ago

MrBuddyCasino 5y ago

> "caused by climate change" Can be translated to "we know this is a good word to say to get research money, so we say it" in this context.

j_wtf_all_taken 5y ago
Yeah and you don't know how the research organization works that produced that research, so ...
- klyrs 5y ago
  I appreciate that you're trying to combat the anti-science shallow/kneejerk critiques, but this is not the way. You're feeding trolls by the handful. Here, you're jumping to conclusions just to dunk on somebody. Please pick your battles more carefully so you can be more deliberate as you wage them.
  - j_wtf_all_taken 5y ago
    But its true? This research organization doesn't have to beg for short-term or 3rd party research money? Also, I'm really pissed and also I'm kind of convinced that its too late anyways to try to convince someone who says stuff like that that they're not right. The only thing that can still be done is trying to keep more people from getting sucked into that black hole. The best way to do this seems to be to de-platform these people. The 2nd best way? No idea. Did I mention I'm pissed? I mean, do you really believe well-researched, weighted, deliberate, thought-through arguments still help? Wouldn't climate science then have succeeded in convincing people? Maybe 20, 30 years ago. But then some people decided to start systematically lying instead of facing reality and lots of people decided to believe those lies and not face reality, and here we are.
    - klyrs 5y ago
      > Also, I'm really pissed and also I'm kind of convinced that its too late anyways to try to convince someone who says stuff like that that they're not right. Look, I'm not arguing with you here. You're admittedly pissed. Please take a breather. This approach can only bolster confirmation bias for folks who think that science is just another religion with fanatical adherents. There's a lot of writing about (including several studies) how to talk to people with extreme / conspiratorial / fact-resistant beliefs. Please read up.

j_wtf_all_taken 5y ago

> Perhaps a particular chimp or gorilla was having a really bad day and just went out looking for a fight. Do chimps and gorillas do such things?

sidenote 5y ago

The article that is linked reads "observations", plural.

morpheos137 5y ago

Is there any evidence of decline of this forest's productivity?

ASalazarMX 5y ago

> The increased food competition may also be caused by the more recent phenomenon of climate change and a collapse in fruit availability as observed in other tropical forests in Gabon. It seems like an educated guess.