Nate Rott

Yeah, so a lot.

Now, he does say there were like substructures in the community, almost like neighborhoods of chimps that spent more time together.

Aaron says he can remember the specific day, June 24th, 2015.

He was with a group of chimps from the western cluster, the western neighborhood, when they heard other chimpanzees nearby, presumably from the central neighborhood.

So these were all chimps that knew each other, but the western chimps did not act like it at all.

No, they don't.

And it wasn't like this was it, right?

Like the groups had split.

Aaron says after those six weeks, they did start interacting again.

But over the next few years, it became increasingly clear that the groups were getting more polarized.

They spent less time together.

The friendships that existed, if we want to call them that, started fading away.

Yeah, it is.

The first time he sent that to me, I was like, whoa.

When I was talking to Aaron, I asked him, well, let's just listen to it.

As a scientist, as a primatologist, it's got to be remarkable, right, to observe this happening in real time.

But is it also kind of sad?

Yeah.

I mean, Aaron says he feels in some respects kind of like a war correspondent.

You know, he's just trying to observe and document everything that's happening as this is spread from males attacking males to even males attacking infants.