Chimp police break up fights: Swiss study [View all]

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http://www.thelocal.ch/2787/20120309/


Photo credit: Claudia Rudolf von Rohr

Researchers at Walter Zoo in Gossau have found that chimpanzees will mediate disputes amongst peers in an effort to keep harmony in the group.

Anthropologists from the University of Zurich, led by Professor Carel van Schaik and Claudia Rudolf von Rohr, studied a group of chimps at the zoo for almost 600 hours across two years, and consulted records of chimp activity from three other zoos, news website the Huffington Post reported.

They found that certain impartial chimps would intervene in conflicts between fighting group members. The policing chimps showed neither bias to one or other side, nor any aggression.

“We were lucky enough to be able to observe a group of chimpanzees into which new females had recently been introduced and in which the ranking of the males was also being redefined,” Claudia Rudolf von Rohr, the lead author of the study, said in a statement.