The chimpanzee, also known as simply the chimp, is a species of great ape native to the forest and savannah of tropical Africa. It has four confirmed subspecies and a fifth proposed one.
Chimpanzee gestation is approximately 8 months long. Prenatal care begins once staff get a positive pregnancy test.
Chimpanzees almost always produce one offspring per pregnancy. These life-history characteristics mean that the growth potential of chimpanzee populations is much less than that of populations of all other species used in research, but growth in captivity can be achieved.
In adulthood, chimpanzee males can have their first child around 15 years old, but females since they mature sooner can have their first child between 13 and 14 years old. They can even have a child every 3 to 5 years!
Chimpanzee mothers usually give birth to one baby at a time.
Humans and chimps have DNA that is 95 percent similar, and 99 percent of our DNA coding sequences are the same as well. However, humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes in our DNA, while chimps only have 22. The difference makes bearing healthy young difficult, and the offspring would be infertile.
Due to the much larger evolutionary distance between humans and monkeys versus humans and chimpanzees, it is considered unlikely that true human-monkey hybrids could be brought to term.
Generations of primatologists have documented strong relationships between mothers and their adult sons, but it was only last year that a study showed these attachments aren't just heartwarming—they're likely the norm.
A variety of cognitive research on chimpanzees places their estimated IQ between 20 and 25, around the average for a human toddler whose brain is still developing the ability to use various cognitive abilities. This is not to say that chimpanzees are not intelligent animals.
An experiment has revealed that most children surpass the intelligence levels of chimpanzees before they reach four years old.
In sharp contrast, chimpanzees give birth in short order and appear to experience very little pain. In this new effort, the researchers wondered about the birth experience for one of our ancestors, Australopithecus sediba—a hominin that lived approximately 1.95 million years ago.
Male monkeys can mate 10 times a day and females can give birth twice a year.
Males show higher mortality than females and data suggest some inter-site variation in mortality. Despite this variation, however, wild chimpanzees generally have a life expectancy at birth of less than 15 years and mean adult lifespan (after sexual maturity) is only about 15 years.
Elephants have the longest pregnancy period of any living mammal. If you – or someone you know – has experienced a pregnancy that seemed to go on forever, spare a thought for the elephant. It's the animal with one of the longest gestation periods of all living mammals: nearly two years.
Chimpanzees usually dine on plants in the wild, as well as termites if they can get them. They are also known to eat vertebrate flesh—one group is known to hunt other primates with spears, and some are even known to engage in cannibalism.
1: Chimpanzee
Chimpanzees can learn sign language to communicate with humans. Topping our list of smartest animals is another great ape, the chimpanzee. The impressive intellectual abilities of this animal have long fascinated humans.
CHIMPANZEES. RECKONED to be the most-intelligent animals on the planet, chimps can manipulate the environment and their surroundings to help themselves and their community. They can work out how to use things as tools to get things done faster, and they have outsmarted people many a time.
Researchers believe that macaques have sex for pleasure because their sexual behavior is similar to humans. For example, macaques experience elevated heart rates and vaginal spasms when mating.
While they do kiss with their lips, their smackers are narrower and don't turn out like ours do. Researchers speculate that this anatomical difference could mean that kissing for chimps is not particularly intimate, but rather an expression of connection like the human hug.
For most folks, a nice hug and some sympathy can help a bit after we get pushed around. Turns out, chimpanzees use hugs and kisses the same way.
Ethical considerations preclude definitive research on the subject, but it's safe to say that human DNA has become so different from that of other animals that interbreeding would likely be impossible.
Gibbons. gibbons (family Hylobatidae) Edmund Appel/Photo Researchers, Inc. These agile tree-dwelling apes act like humans in that they occasionally cheat on their mates, sometimes break up, and later get back together again.
The human brain is about three times as big as the brain of our closest living relative, the chimpanzee. Moreover, a part of the brain called the cerebral cortex – which plays a key role in memory, attention, awareness and thought – contains twice as many cells in humans as the same region in chimpanzees.