John Mitani

These are chimps that I love.

And it's just been heartbreaking to watch this unfold and have these individuals turn on each other like this.

Well, you're pointing to another thing that's very, very difficult to explain, given what's happened.

Because what's actually happened is that all the killings have been asymmetric.

What does that mean?

They've all been from one side.

So individuals from one group have done all the killing, and the victims have been from the other fission product.

But the interesting thing here, or the surprising thing here, is that it's been the members of the initially smaller group that have taken the offensive and done all the killing.

And why, at least initially, members from that larger group...

To retaliate and fight back when they had a chance to is something that's entirely inexplicable to me.

Yeah, we're actually up to 28 now.

Well, they've gained an advantage in the process.

At the time of the split, they are much smaller than the other post-fission product.

The killers were in a group of around 80 or so.

The other group had about 110 and now was in part as a result of all these killings.

The tables have been flipped.

The killers group numbers over 100 and the other group, the victims group, was down numbers in the 70s.

If you'd like to think of that in those terms, I think of it more, well, perhaps.

Well, again, you know, this whole thing, it's been heartbreaking for me.

It's hard.