Are chimps aggressive?
Like human beings, chimps exhibit all sorts of diverse behavior, everything from compassion, to gentleness, to sexuality, to violence. You find violence in human society and you can find violence in chimps.
What causes them to attack?
The thing about chimpanzees is, we sort of look at them through our rose colored cultural glasses, the cute little chimp in the "Tarzan" movie. Those are very young chimps. Chimps grow up, they become very powerful. They are very complex in their behavior. They have a whole range of emotions, including violence and anger. You may see a display of compassion, at the same time, you can see chimp murder. We just got back from Uganda, and we actually looked at footage of chimps that had murdered another chimp.
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