High ranking chimps act as mediators Fighting chimpanzees
sometimes look for an impartial member of their group to mediate
in their conflict, according to researchers from the University
of Zurich. Conflict management is highly significant for life in
social groups, the researchers concluded in their findings
published in the magazine PLoS ONE. The study was based on the
behaviour of a group of hominids in the zoo at Gossau in
Switzerland. The team said it was astonishing that chimpanzees
were able to mediate in a conflict, without themselves deriving
any immediate advantage from their efforts. “The rarest and most
interesting form of conflict management is policing, that is
impartial interventions by bystanders, which is of considerable
interest due to its potentially moral nature,” they said. The
team led by anthropologists Carel van Schaik and Claudia Rudolf
von Rohr observed a group of 11 chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes),
evaluating their natural behaviour without provoking conflict.
The group consisted of t