It's in your nature
Do animals go to war?
Audio 04:08
A keeper feeds a group of chimpanzees at a reserve 50 kilometers from Monrovia, Liberia (illustrative image).
AP - Abbas Dulleh
By: Florent Guignard Follow
3 mins
It is the 18th day of war in Ukraine.
But humans aren't the only ones leading invasions.
Some species of animals wage war, for the conquest of territories and access to more food.
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"
There is no Poutine among the ants!"
» No general or dictator to declare war on the most widespread insect in the world, and one of the most warlike animals, capable of fighting battles involving thousands and thousands of individuals on the planet. battlefield.
“
The queen has no role, it is really about individual decisions,
continues Laurent Keller, professor of biology at the University of Lausanne.
If the colony lacks food, the ants will try to increase the size of their territory.
»
The Swiss myrmecologist observed the terrible wars led by the Argentine ant, invasive in the south of France: “
Many workers will attack the brood, eat the babies.
They are not ants that have a lot of strength, so they get together to attack other individuals, and even if they have a high mortality, they will still win.
Many species will attack with their mandibles,
describes Laurent Keller.
Some can sting with venom, others have glands that can produce poisonous substances capable of paralyzing the enemy.
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Altruistic ants
War medicine is even made with ants.
“
If an ant loses a leg, it will produce pheromones to tell others that it is injured;
they will bring it back to the nest to take care of it,
specifies Laurent Keller.
But if the individual is too injured, for example if he is missing three legs, he will not report himself.
It is an altruistic act: he will no longer be useful to the colony and therefore he will remain on the battlefield.
“Dead for the fatherland, and for the food.
Predation, killing prey for food, is not part of animal warfare.
The war between animals involves collective and concerted action to expand its territory.
Only social and territorial animals go to war, and belligerent behavior is ultimately the exception, which concerns only a few species.
Ants, hyenas, or chimpanzees.
The Gombe War
British primatologist Jane Goodall observed it for the first time in Tanzania, in Gombe National Park, in the 1970s: four years of a particularly cruel war between chimpanzees.
“
When a group of chimpanzees found another group of chimpanzees at the edge of their territory, the individuals killed each other, they targeted small children,
says Shelly Masi, primatologist for the National Museum of Natural History and the Museum of Nature. 'Man, in Paris.
They tore bodies apart, the testicles of males were torn off… Acts of violence that Jane Goodall had never seen.
»
More recently, researchers have even observed chimpanzees in Gabon attacking a species other than their own: gorillas.
"
The silverback gorilla is still twice the size of a chimpanzee,
" says Shelly Masi, specialist in the largest primate in the world.
The silverback tried to fight back, but due to the cooperation between the chimpanzees, eight individuals against a single gorilla, the chimpanzees were able to kill a small gorilla child.
»
The bonobo makes love, not war
Is war in the genes?
The answer is not obvious, since the bonobo, the monkey closest to us, even more than the chimpanzee, makes love, not war.
But it is less territorial than its close cousin chimpanzee.
“
Primatologists wondered about the origins of war in humans by looking at what was happening in chimpanzees,
explains Shelly Masi.
Territoriality seems to be an important characteristic to trigger this type of warfare.
Today in Ukraine, we are indeed seeing a war waged for territory.
»
THE QUESTION
“Do animals make war on humans?
»
Animals enlisted in conflicts are legion.
The US Navy has a unit of dolphins to locate underwater mines.
In ancient times, pigs covered in flaming tar were hurled at Hannibal's elephants.
During the First World War, 300,000 racing pigeons were used, and one of them even received a military medal in France.
Not to mention horses, dogs, and even cats to hunt trench rats… Hundreds of thousands of unknown soldiers.
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