Chimpanzees
How Much Do You Know About Chimpanzees?
Chimpanzees are one of our closest living relatives. Humans and chimpanzees share 95 to 98 % of the same DNA!
Chimpanzees make and use tools. They use more tools for more purposes than any other creature except human beings.
Chimpanzees develop lifelong family bonds, particularly between mother and child. Mothers and dependent young (up to age 7 or so) are always together.
Chimpanzees can currently be found in 21 African countries. The greatest concentration of chimpanzees is in the rain forests of what used to be the equatorial forest belt.
Chimpanzees are omnivores, which means they eat fruits, nuts, seeds, blossoms. and leaves, as well as many kinds of insects and occasionally medium-sized animals.
Chimpanzees communicate in many ways, most notably through sounds and calls. They also communicate with each other through touch, facial expressions. and body language.
Chimpanzees are knuckle walkers, which means they walk on all fours using their knuckles for support when they are on the ground or even when they are up in trees.
Chimpanzee habitat is rapidly disappearing as human activity increases in the areas where chimpanzees live. Some of the causes for habitat loss include the conversion of land into agriculture, competition for natural resources such as firewood, commercial logging. and mining.
Chimpanzees can catch and be infected with a number of human diseases.
Chimpanzees are endangered. At the turn of the 20th century, they numbered between 1 and 2 million. Now there are estimated to be fewer than 300,000 chimpanzees remaining in the wild.
Fun Facts About Chimpanzees
- In captivity, chimpanzees can be taught human sign languages such as ASL (American Sign Language).
- Scientists have only recently been able to determine chimpanzee paternity through analyzing DNA in chimpanzee scat (also known as poop).
- Chimpanzees sometimes get bored and will make up games to amuse themselves.
- Chimpanzees communicate physically in ways similar to humans—by kissing, embracing, patting on the back, touching hands, tickling, etc. They even laugh when they play
- Chimpanzees have opposable thumbs and big toes, which enable them to have a precision grip on just about anything.
- Infant chimpanzees have a white tail tuft that disappears by early adulthood.
- As a rite of passage, almost every young chimpanzee gets lost from his or her mother at some point during exploration.
- Chimpanzees aren’t always graceful.
- Each night, chimpanzees make “nests” to sleep in and they never sleep in the same nest twice. The nests are made out of leaves, branches and other materials. Sometimes they even make a pillow out of the softest leaves.
- Some chimpanzees, like Golden and glitter, have Facebook pages. They are the oldest known set of Chimpanzee twins.
- On an average, chimpanzees sleep up to 9.7 hours each day.
- Chimpanzees cannot swim.
- Chimpanzees have no tail.