1. Chimpanzees are usually found in the rain forests, woodlands, and grasslands of Africa – specifically Central and West Africa.
2. On average, chimpanzees only stand about 4 feet high and weigh between 90 and 120 pounds. Females typically weigh between 60 and 100 pounds.
3. Female chimps only give birth about once every five or six years when they are in the wild. Their offspring often stay with the mother for as long as 10 years after birth. Their gestation period lasts between 8 and 9 months, much like a human’s.
4. When a female chimpanzee has her first baby, she is usually unsure about how to care for it. But she watches other mothers and uses her own instincts to learn how to care for her baby.
She was a loving, yet stern, aunt-like figure to a pair of young chimpanzees, Harper and Emma, and she helped Henry, a male chimpanzee who came from a situation of terrible abuse, get along with. Chimpanzee, often shortened to chimp, is the common name for the two extant species in the genus Pan. The better known chimpanzee is Pan troglodytes, the Common Chimpanzee, living primarily in. Chimpanzee Chimpanzees are omnivores, meaning they eat both plants and animals. Young chimpanzees learn from observing their mothers and other adults which foods are safe to eat and where ripe food.
The characteristic chimpanzee shape includes arms that extend beyond the knees, opposable thumbs, and a prominent mouth. The skin on the face, ears, palms, and soles of the feet is bare, and the rest of the body is covered with brown to black hair. Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) are one of only two species in the genus Pan, the other being the bonobo (Pan paniscus), and we’re equally closely related to both species – evolutionary biologists believe that humans, chimps and bonobos shared a common ancestor around 7 million years ago.
5. When a mother chimp dies, the older offspring often begin caring for the smaller chimps. Also, some unrelated chimpanzees will “adopt” the younger chimps and take care of them until they are old enough to care for themselves.
6. Chimpanzees and humans share as much as 98 percent of the same DNA. In terms of biology, a chimpanzee’s DNA is closer to a human’s than it is to a gorilla’s.
7. Other than humans, chimpanzees use tools more often and for more purposes than any other animal on earth.
8. In general, chimpanzees have been measured to be six to seven times stronger than humans.
9. Chimpanzees can contract many of the same diseases that humans can get, including malaria, Ebola, and several others.
10. When in captivity, a chimpanzee can learn many things, including human sign language. One chimp by the name of Washoe has learned more than 240 hand signs for communicating with others.
11. Chimpanzees have been observed laughing when they play with others.
12. Chimpanzees do not take long-term sexual partners. As a result, there is no competition when choosing another chimpanzee to mate with.
13. The mating ritual between chimpanzees only takes between 10 and 15 seconds. In most cases, the chimps are also doing something else, such as eating, while engaging in mating.
14. Chimpanzees can live as long as 50 years when they are in the wild. They can live up to 60 years when they are in captivity.
15. Male chimpanzees almost never leave the community in which they were born. Females, however, often venture out and migrate to other communities during their adolescence.
16. Chimpanzees are social creatures. They spend much of their time grooming each other, tickling each other, and hugging and kissing each other.
17. When boredom strikes, chimpanzees often make up games and activities to entertain each other.
18. Chimpanzees make a new nest almost every night in a different location.
19. Chimpanzees prefer to walk on all fours, but they can walk on just their hind legs.
20. Chimpanzees mostly communicate with their lips without making any sounds. However, they do have noises that they make that can be heard up to a mile away if they need to call other members of the group.
21. The skin of a chimpanzee gets darker as it gets older.
22. One of the most dangerous predators for the chimpanzee is the leopard because they are one of the few animals that can live both on the ground and in the trees, just like the chimpanzee.
23. A chimpanzee’s diet consists of insects, eggs, honey, bark, leaves, fruits and meat.
24. When chimpanzees feel sick, they know which plants to eat in order to make themselves feel better.
25. At the beginning of the 20th century, there were between one and two million chimpanzees on earth. Today, there is believed to be fewer than 300,000 chimpanzees living.
- Class:Mammalia (Mammals)
- Order: Primates
- Family: Hominidae
- Genus: Pan
- Species: troglodytes
The great knuckle-walker. Chimpanzees are very familiar to us humans, perhaps because so much of their behavior reminds us of ourselves. They are considered great apes, just like gorillas, orangutans, and bonobos. Their distinctive mode of travel—walking on the sole of each foot and the knuckles of their hands—have earned them the title of knuckle-walkers.
Chimpanzee Rage
Look closely. There is no hair on a chimpanzee’s face, hands, or feet, but the rest of its body is covered with either long black or brown hair. Unlike other primates such as monkeys and baboons, chimps and other apes don’t have a tail. But chimpanzees do have large ears that stick out a bit, which helps them hear other chimps in a dense forest. Like humans, chimps have opposable thumbs to help them grasp branches or grab a bite to eat, as well as fingernails and toenails.
Chimpanzees inhabit tropical rainforest, and lowland and mountain forests in western and Central Africa.
Everything tastes good! Chimpanzees eat a wide variety of food. Scientists have recorded about 80 different items chimps eat, including seeds, fruit, leaves, bark, honey, flowers, and insects. This makes up most of their diet. However, chimpanzees also hunt other wildlife, like monkeys or small antelope, for meat. Feeding is usually an individual activity, but sometimes chimps look for food together.
Clever primates. Chimpanzees are famous for using tools to get food. They often strip a branch of its leaves and then dip it in an ant or termite hill to get the insects inside. When water is scarce, chimps chew leaves so they are soft and sponge-like—this allows them to then soak up rainwater inside of tree holes.
All in the family. Home for a chimpanzee is a community of other chimps made up of family groups. Within these family groups there are usually about 6 to 10 individuals. An entire chimp community can sometimes have as many as 100 members, made up of many different family groups. One experienced adult male chimp can be the leader of the troop, although in other troops leadership is shared among several males.
Chimpanzees use body language, facial expressions, hand-clapping, grooming, and kissing to communicate within their troop. Usually a male stays in the community into which he was born, but females transfer to others when they become adults.
Baby apes. Female chimps usually give birth for the first time when they are between 12 and 15 years old. Newborn chimps have pink skin under their dark hair that later turns black as they age. They are extremely helpless at birth, and the youngsters must stay with their mother until age seven before they can survive on their own.
Soon after birth, the baby learns to cling to its mother’s underside. Later it transfers to her back and uses this piggyback style of riding for the next seven months or so. A young chimp gets milk from its mother until it is about three years old. It can begin walking on its own at about age four but continues to stay with Mom for a few more years, learning all the skills needed to survive. A mother chimp develops a close bond with her young that may last a lifetime.
Our chimpanzee history began in 1930 with the arrival of Tim, a young male chimpanzee about six or seven years of age. In 1932, a four- or five-year-old female named Katie arrived to keep him company. Their first baby, George, was born in 1938. At his birth, George and his mother were separated from Tim because staff wished to take no chance that Tim might hurt his son. They found, however, that Tim took a paternal interest, poking his finger through the dividing mesh partition to touch him. Katie missed Tim and often sat close to him with only the partition between them. And so, the little family was soon reunited. Tim participated in George’s care and upbringing. This was a somewhat unusual procedure for zoos at the time, but staff found that it worked well for the chimpanzees.
We continued to care for chimpanzees until 1976. The San Diego Zoo does not care for chimpanzees at this time.
Chimpanzees have been involved in many scientific studies. Unfortunately, some people keep them as pets. Taking them from their natural habitat has caused a decline in their populations. People also hunt chimps for food (bushmeat) or to protect their crops from being eaten by hungry chimps. These conditions, plus loss of habitat, have resulted in the chimpanzee being endangered.
Chimpanzee Test
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