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Researchers watched two groups of western chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus) in Africa climb hills to spy on each other, similar to reconnaissance missions used by the military. They then use this information to decide when to enter disputed territory.

Many animals look for danger in their environments, but scientists have documented the first time a non-human species carefully uses upland terrain to assess the risk of conflict over the territory.

This really demonstrates the capacity for metacognition, which is the ability to reflect on your own knowledge and act on what you don’t know to learn more.
– says the study’s lead author, Sylvain Lemoine, associate professor at the Department of Biological Anthropology at the University of Cambridge.

The use of high ground is one of the oldest military tactics in human warfare. Chimpanzees live in societies that compete for space and resources, and their normal behavior includes coordinated aggression, including random killing. Because boundaries between chimpanzee communities are not fixed as in humans, the animals’ daily presence in a given area is of great importance. Lemoine explains that it’s like living in a “permanent, low-intensity, small-scale war.”

The new study looked at two neighboring chimpanzee communities monitored in Tay National Park in Ivory Coast. The team, along with students and local assistants, observed the chimpanzees for 8 to 12 hours a day between 2013 and 2016, collecting GPS and behavioral data.

Chimpanzees in the study were more likely to move from high ground to contested territory when their rivals were away; This suggests that they used the hills to avoid conflict.

However, they can also use them to find opportunities to attack. Lemoine noted that when members of two communities meet, the balance of power (numbers on each side) is an important factor in determining whether one side will escalate violence. Chimpanzees appear to be able to weigh the pros and cons of interactions, and crests help them do this.

It is not a fact that other chimpanzees exhibit the same behavior; observations were made only in Tai Park. The complex cognitive abilities that help chimpanzees expand their territories must be supported by natural selection, Lemoine said, which could indicate that this battle tactic has deep evolutionary roots. “We may be seeing traces of early small-scale warfare that probably existed in prehistoric hunter-gatherer populations.”– said.