Kasakela chimpanzee community
The Kasekela chimpanzee community is a habituated community of wild eastern chimpanzees that lives in Gombe National Park near Lake Tanganyika in Tanzania. The community was the subject of Jane Goodall's pioneering study that began in 1960, and studies have continued ever since, becoming the longest continuous study of any animals in their natural habitat. As a result, the community has been instrumental in the study of chimpanzees and has been popularized in several books and documentaries. The community's popularity was enhanced by Goodall's practice of giving names to the chimpanzees she was observing, in contrast to the typical scientific practice of identifying the subjects by number. Goodall generally used a naming convention in which infants were given names starting with the same letter as their mother, allowing the recognition of matrilineal lines.
One of the most important discoveries that was learned by observing the Kasekela chimpanzee community was the use of tools. On November 4, 1960, Goodall observed a chimpanzee that she had named David Greybeard using a grass stalk as a tool to extract termites from a termite hill. Later, she observed David Greybeard and another chimpanzee named Goliath stripping leaves off twigs to create termite fishing tools. Previously, tool use in chimpanzees was only rarely observed, and tool creation by non-human animals had never been observed. Until then, tool making was considered one of the defining characteristics of being human. Another important observation occurred a few days earlier, on October 30, 1960. On that day Goodall observed the community's chimpanzees eating meat, dispelling the notion that chimpanzees are vegetarians. A third observation by Goodall in the early 1960s was that male chimpanzees perform a "rain dance," charging, calling, slapping the ground and trees and dragging branches in the rain. In the early 1970s the chimpanzees of the community were observed to engage in ongoing coordinated attacks against the chimpanzees of the neighbouring Kahama Chimpanzee Community, ultimately wiping it out. According to historian Ian Morris, this "Four Year War" represented the first time scientists had observed chimpanzees "deliberately seek out, attack and leave for dead" chimps from another community, and it has been described as "the first record of lasting 'warfare' among primates."
Several families within the Kasekela chimpanzee community have been particularly prominent in books and documentaries. The F-family has produced five alpha males for the community, and the matriarch, Flo, played a particularly important role in acknowledging Goodall's acceptance as a human observer by the community. The G-family has produced at least one alpha male, and also the birth of several twins, which are rare among chimpanzees. There are other families as well which include the T-family and S-family.
F-family
Flo
Flo was the matriarch of the F-family, so named because she and all her matrilineal descendants were given names beginning with the letter "F". In 1962, Flo was one of the first chimpanzees to approach Goodall's camp, along with her infant daughter Fifi. Video of Flo approaching Goodall and allowing Fifi to reach out to touch Goodall's forehead, letting Goodall know she had been accepted, is shown in the IMAX film Jane Goodall's Wild Chimpanzees. Later she brought her sons Figan and Faben, who would later become prominent members of the community to the camp, and when she came into estrus in 1963 she attracted the community's males to Goodall's camp.From the time Dr. Jane Goodall first observed her, Flo appeared to be the highest-ranking female in the whole Kasekela chimp community, who, although portrayed as an affectionate, playful and tolerant individual when interacting with her offspring, did not hesitate to aggressively dominate other females. She was a successful mother and fierce defender of her offspring, all of whom grew up with self-confidence because of her dominant status. Fifi, raised by her confident mother Flo, grew to be a popular female in Gombe, not only because of her high-ranking family but also from her close ties with the adult males. She inherited her mother's superior status and because her older brothers Faben and Figan were among the top big males, she grew up with enormous confidence. Flo had at least five known offspring, three sons and two daughters. Flo was 28 years old when she gave birth to Faben. Most female chimpanzees have their first infant when 12–14 years of age, so it is possible that Flo had at least one infant prior to Faben that either died or, if it was a female, would have transferred to one of the other communities prior to Goodall's arrival to Gombe in 1960. When Flo died in 1972, she was given an obituary in Britain's Sunday Times. Flo's descendants make up a third of the Kasekela chimpanzee community, with individuals that have risen to power over the years. Her daughter Fifi reigned supreme after her and produced more offspring than any other female in Gombe history until 2004. Her grandsons, Freud, Frodo and Ferdinand were alpha males in the community, which as of 2025, is headed by her great grandson, Fudge.
Faben
Faben was Flo's oldest known offspring. He was a powerful male, but lost the use of one arm in a polio epidemic that ravaged the community in 1966. Despite his disability, he learned to create spectacular bipedal charging displays, which allowed him to regain a high rank within the community. His support was critical to Humphrey's ascension to alpha male rank in 1969, and to his brother Figan's ascension to alpha male in 1972. Faben also participated in the conflicts with the rival Kahama community that occurred between 1973 and 1975, and was a leader in the killing of several Kahama males, including former Kasekela alpha male Goliath. Faben himself died in 1975, possibly as a result of further conflicts with the Kahama community. Following Faben's death, Figan had difficulty maintaining his alpha male position for several months and eventually lost his alpha status to Goblin.Figan
Figan was Flo's second son. Goodall considered him to be Gombe's most intelligent chimpanzee. Although younger than Faben, he was able to dominate his older brother after Faben's arm was paralyzed from polio in 1966. With Faben's support, Figan was able to become alpha male in 1972 by defeating the prior alpha Humphrey and an older competitor Evered. At this time, Goodall described him as the most powerful alpha male in Gombe’s recorded history. After Faben's death in 1975, Figan lost his unquestioned alpha status, in that he could be dominated by a coalition of males, but remained the top-ranked male. By 1977, he had regained his alpha status by forging alliances with other males, including his predecessor Humphrey. In 1979, he was toppled from his alpha status by 15-year-old Goblin, whom he had previously supported, but regained his alpha status once again by forging alliances with other males. Although a powerful male, Figan's ability to make alliances with other males was instrumental to allow him to hold on to his alpha status. In 1982, Goblin unseated him again, and Figan disappeared and presumably died a few months later, although when last seen he appeared to be in good health. Although Figan was the alpha male for several years, he is not known for certain to have sired any infants, although he is likely the father of a few.Fifi
Fifi was Flo's oldest daughter. Fifi benefited from her high-ranking family, and ascended to the top of the female hierarchy in her community. Fifi had nine infants, seven of whom survived to independence. Her two oldest sons, Freud and Frodo, both have become the community's alpha male, as did another son, Ferdinand. One of her other sons, Faustino, also attained high rank. Her three surviving daughters were Fanni, Flossi and Flirt. She also had one son, Fred and one daughter, Furaha who died in infancy. Fred was fathered by one of Fifi's other sons, Frodo. Five-year-old Fifi was the focal point of the documentary People of the Forest: The Chimps of Gombe, in which her mother and siblings also featured, attempting to gain access to her infant brother Flint. All four of Fifi's surviving sons had all held the alpha and/or beta positions in the community. Grandson Fudge also attained alpha male status. Late in Frodo's reign as alpha male, Fifi helped defend him against attacks and she suffered some injuries in the process.Although males are perceived as the more aggressive sex in chimpanzees, studies at Gombe have revealed that aggression among females with each other does indeed occur. One of two contexts for female-female aggressive encounters in Gombe was the presence of newborn infants. Fifi grew to be a formidable female who, although a very successful mother herself, was observed to have carried out ferocious and infanticidal attacks on other, lower-ranking females in her community. Such attacks were observed of Fifi and her adult daughter, Fanni, aggressively harassing fellow Kasekela female, Gremlin, on three different occasions; the first being in 1993 following the birth of her daughter Gaia, and then five years later following the birth of her twins. This was followed by another attack on Gremlin six years later following the birth of her next baby. Researchers could only speculate that the attacks on infants of other females had to do with food competition, as each female strives to secure resources for her own group of offspring and thus the expansion of another female's family unit could deplete resources. The attacks by Fifi and Fanni mirror those of previous perpetrators Passion and Pom in the 1970s, which proved that cannibalism, though deemed rare, does occur among both male and female chimpanzees.
In 2004, Fifi, who was by then 46 years old which made her the oldest living chimpanzee in the Kasekela community at that point in time, disappeared in September with her youngest and ninth offspring, two year old daughter Furaha. During that year she shifted her range to the far north of the Kasekela community territory, and the simultaneous advancement of the neighbouring Mitumba community further south nearing the Kasekela territory border suggests that Fifi and her youngster may have been fatally attacked by the Mitumba territorial males. A female chimpanzee leaving the safety of her community territory poses risks, particularly if she has a vulnerable youngster. Studies on chimpanzee intercommunity relations revealed that chimpanzees are likely to be attacked by the territorial males of a rival community, and the intensity of the attacks depends on the gender of the intruder, and if the stranger is female, it depends on whether or not they are of any reproductive benefit to the males. Young, cycling females are often spared an attack because they are deemed to be potential new mates, but a lactating mother with a young infant is considered of very little use for the males, which results in lethal aggression and fatality. The bodies of Fifi and Furaha were never found, but the confirmed death of fellow Kasekela female, Patti, in 2005, by neighbouring Mitumba community males provides a near definitive conclusion of the fate that befell Fifi and her youngster.