Chimps: the dark side

How many of you all have the perspective of chimpanzees are cute animal with intelligence and social element only? That they have been such a friendly creature, being full of love with their infants and not knowing that they have a dark side.

I've just watched a documentary in National Geographic about the dark side of the chimps and some of its videos are rather disturbing for me.

Chimps are very much like human; aside of its 99% DNA similarities between the two of us, they also have emotions, and some scientists believe that they have the sense of wonder.

But what I have just found out about chimpanzees for the last two days are that they are fierce; they organise wars towards other chimps from another teritory and have the ability to spy and assess the enemy capability and assemble their power in number.

I found the link of a video that I saw in the National Geographic, but the link seems to be dead when i was trying to access it; chimpanzee attack in Tanzania in 1998. The same incident happens in Uganda in 1998 filmed.

"In 1998, researchers in Uganda saw a group of male chimpanzees beating on and swaggering around another male chimp’s freshly killed body. Its windpipe, fingernails and testicles were torn out."
[World Science, 2005, Wired for war?, http://www.world-science.net/exclusives/050209_warfrm.htm]

They showed the corpse of the dead chimp after the killing [National Geographic] and believe me.. that was horrible; just like a pycho killing in movies.

But researchers say that this behaviour is basically same with humans.Imagine yourself going into another country without passport and see if they don't shoot you.. [umm.. maybe not that fierce] ^_^

A few links for further information and some of my references:

• Wired for war?: Killer chimps fuel debate on how war began
• Chimps: Man or Monkey?
• National Geographic: The Dark Side Of Chimps