Interesting Chimpanzee Facts

You might think I’m wrong if I say chimpanzees are our closest living relative (cousins)! Chimps are highly social animals like us; they care for their offspring for years and live to be over 50, chimps have only A or O While humans have blood types A, B, O, and AB . In fact, we Homo sapiens share about 98.4% of our genetic DNA.

Scientific name: Pan

Class: Mammalia

Order: Primates

Family: Hominidae

IUCN status: Endangered
Lifespan (in wild): 45 years
Weight: 32-60kg
Height: 1-1.7m when stood up straight

Diet: Omnivore
Habitat: Forests (moist and dry forests)

Chimpanzees have the same bones and muscles as humans with differences only in form; their arms are longer than their legs. Chimpanzees have robust bodies and powerful arms, because of their dense bones and muscle tissue, the upper body strength of a mature chimpanzee is 8-10 times that than that of humans. They get around by swinging through trees and by walking on all fours (knuckle-walking), but they can also walk upright on two feet sometimes.

Chimps are one of the few skillful animals that are able to use tools and manipulate objects in their environment in order to fashion them.  This includes the use of sticks to retrieve insects from the leaf litter and fishing, stones to crack hard palm nuts and bunches of leaves to sop up drinking water. They have opposable thumbs and toes that allow for grasping, climbing, and object manipulation.

Chimpanzees awaken at dawn, and their day is spent both in the trees and on the ground. After a lengthy midday rest, late afternoon is usually the most intensive feeding period. In the trees, where most feeding takes place, chimps use their hands and feet to move about. They also leap and swing by their arms skillfully from branch to branch. Their diet varies seasonally consisting mainly of fruit , but also leaves, flowers, seeds and animal prey such as grubs, termites, ants, wasps, birds and mammals including bush-pigs, duikers, rodents and even other primates. Chimpanzees eat medicinal plants when they have problems such as intestinal parasites and stomach upset

Chimpanzees live in a group or a community that can number from 20 or fewer to well over 100 members. Each consists of several subgroups of varying size and unstable composition. Within a community, there are twice or three times as many adult females as adult males; the number of adults is about equal to the number of immature individuals. The dominant (alpha) male of a group can monopolize ovulating females through possessive behavior. On the other hand, gang attack by subordinate males can expel an alpha male. Males spend all of their lives in the community they are born in, but occasionally a juvenile male may transfer to another community with his mother. In disparity to males, most females leave their group of birth to join a neighboring group when they mature at around age 11. The female chimpanzee bears a single young at any time of year after a gestation period of about eight months. The newborn weighs about 1.8 kg (about 4 pounds), is almost helpless, and clings to the fur of the mother’s belly as she moves. The longevity of chimps is about 45 years in the wild and 58 in captivity; however, older individuals have been documented. For example, Cheetah the chimpanzee, an animal actor from the Tarzan movies of the 1930s and ’40s, was reported to have lived approximately 80 years.

 

Chimpanzees have many different vocalizations from soft grunts and lip smacks to alarm barks and screams.  One of the most notable vocalizations is the pant hoot used in situations of increasing social excitement. Chimpanzees are also capable of learning basic human sign language.

 

Did you know?

1. Chimpanzees have 32 teethsame as humans.
2. Washoe, a captive female chimpanzee, was able to learn American Sign Language (ASL), with a vocabulary of 350 words. A chimpanzee’s senses of sight, taste, and hearing are similar to those of humans.

 

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