These parameters link the violence to natural selection: killing competitors improves a male chimp's access to resources like food and territory - and crucially, it will happen more frequently when there is greater competition from neighbouring groups, and when the males can patrol in large numbers, with less risk to their own survival.

Chimpanzees and bonobos are our closest living evolutionary relatives
"It's a natural behaviour - it's not something that we've induced by disturbance or intervention," explained Dr Susanne Shultz, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Manchester.