They are blatant and friendly; they are genius and communicative; we are telling you about the magnificent Chimpanzee which is an inspirational ape is native to the African continent. Apes are different from monkeys becase they don’t have tails. Chimpanzees are members of the Homonidae family and their scientific name is Pan troglodytes. Chimpanzee is sometimes colloquially called as chimp who has amazing similarities with the humans in many aspects; the most important is that the chimps share approximately 98% of their DNA with humans.

Chimpanzee or Chimp – An image by William Warby – flickr

The chimpanzee has a bulky body with long arms, short legs and no tail. Much of the body is covered with long black hair, but the face, ears, fingers and toes are bare. They have hands that can grip firmly, allowing them to pick up objects. The discovery that they used “tools” for certain purposes surprised the world. Chimpanzees are omnivores. They rely heavily on a wide variety fruit and leaves, but also eat insects, bark, eggs, nuts, and even hunt monkeys and other small animals for meat. Chimpanzees spend a large part of their day looking for food and eating, but they do not wander aimlessly through the forest hoping to bump into food.

Chimpanzee is enjoying the dinner – Image by cynicalview – flickr

Chimpanzees make tools and use them to acquire foods and for social displays; they have sophisticated hunting strategies requiring cooperation, influence and rank; they are status conscious, manipulative and capable of deception; they can learn to use symbols and understand aspects of human language including some relational syntax, concepts of number and numerical sequence; and they are capable of spontaneous planning for a future state or event. Chimps normally live in group formations that are normally called as troops, of some 30 to 80 individuals. These large groups are made up of smaller, very flexible groups of just a few animals, perhaps all females, all males or a mixed group.

A young chimp on the back of his mom – Image by yuki_alm_misa

Chimpanzees live in multi-male, multi-female communities. The females may mate with multiple males, and the males thus generally treat all offspring as if they were their own, since there is no way to know for sure. Females have a bright pink bottom that signals to males when they are fertile. A female chimp will usually have her first child at around the age of 14 years old. The gestation period is approximately 9 months, just like in humans. The infants are dependent upon their mother for at least 5 years, and can usually live independently by age 6, but still spend considerable time with their mothers even into adulthood. Chimps are considered adults by age 15. A female chimp will not be fertile again until her child is fully weaned, so at most a female chimp will give birth every five years. She may have approximately 4-6 children in her lifetime. Chimpanzees can live for more than 50 years.

Chimp family – Chimpanzees – Image by Maia C – flickr

Adult common chimpanzees, particularly males, can be very aggressive. They are highly territorial and are known to kill other chimps. Chimps are agile climbers, building nests high up in trees to rest in during midday and sleep in at night. They construct new nests in minutes by bending branches, intertwining them to form a platform and lining the edges with twigs. In some areas chimps make nests on the ground.The magnificent Chimpanzee or the Chimps are under threat; not long time ago they had a huge population, in fact in millions who used to wander in the jungles of more than 25 African countries. But now their population is dangerously reduced to only a few hundred thousands.

Chimpanzee’s nest Joey Verge

The main threats to the chimpanzee or chimps are habitat loss and hunting for bushmeat. Degradation of forests through logging, mining, farming, and other forms of land development is contributing to the decline of the population of Chimpanzee in Africa.