Before the war and the split of the Ngogo chimpanzees into two groups, the Westerners and the Centrals, “Jackson” was alpha, the leader of everyone. He spent his time mostly in the center of his kingdom, and there were lesser alphas in the outlying areas (“Richmond”, to the west, for example), but Jackson was undisputed.
He would sometimes go around shrieking, screaming, and creating havoc in the jungle as a demonstration of his power to the other chimps in his tribe, especially the males who aspire to overthrow him from the seat of power. He is seen breaking branches of trees during such episodes making me wonder whether he sought to physically beat his rivals into submission although such scenes were not present in the documentary.
Jackson from the Central group not only fought to keep power over his own Central tribe but would engage in fights with the Western group in order to maintain their territorial hold over trees that bore fruits.
It also reminds viewers of human leaders having become more sophisticated politically and going to extreme lengths to consolidate their power through the use and show of force – though democratic elections were thought as a demonstration of civility despite such electoral moves being coerced and stacked into favor of autocratic leaders, such as we saw Erdogan winning Turkey’s presidential election recently.
The documentary was eye-opening in many ways – not least because we can conduct experiments in laboratory on rats to introduce pharmaceutical drugs for people as the majority of genes in humans have a counterpart in rats, and the basic genetic machinery is conserved across mammals. This means that many biological processes and pathways are shared between humans and rats.
As humans share more than 98 percent of DNA with chimpanzees, there were critical messages that we could learn from their mindset and behavior.
Narrated by two time Oscar winning Muslim actor Mahershala Ali, and directed by James Reed who in 2021 won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature for “My Octopus Teacher”, “Chimp Empire”, shot over more than 400 days showed how territorial chimps are, and their willingness to kill members of rival chimp tribes to retain that status quo.
It also showed how the alpha male maintains its patriarchal dominance by threatening male members of its own tribe.
It showed that grooming is a crucial part of bonding among chimps with the allowing of other chimps to physically touch the chimps they want to form a relationship with. I am not sure the extent to which grooming is carried out as the documentary concentrates mostly on chimps exploring the fur covering of other chimps which reminded me of my childhood when there were no shampoos or other sophisticated chemicals to remove lice from hair and beards and it had to be done with the help of a family member or a friend.
The documentary also showed that female chimps on reaching adulthood move to mingle with other tribes so that no negative effects result on the gene pool.
One of the most disturbing scenes was not only showing chimps killing rival chimps but also catching and eating monkeys as a source of food. This has a great significance to politics in the tribe as meat is shared with those the alpha doesn’t mind being friends with or form alliances but refuse it to other males in the group who demonstrate signs of aspirations in competing to become the alpha and so the alpha doesn’t mind making them his enemies.
One of my Maldivian friends who watched “Chimp Empire” said that this documentary series could be regarded as a key cautionary tale or life affirming lesson for humans in that, regardless of “bad” people, there are “good” people as well. Case in point: humans do extend humanitarian assistance to strangers in need, for example, during natural disasters like earthquakes and tsunamis. So upon watching the documentary, I was heartened to know that humans do have a heart for humanity and that not all humans behave like uncivilized barbarous animals.
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