55 Fun Facts About Chimpanzee

What is the easiest way to tell a chimpanzee apart from most monkeys?

It has no tail: a 2024 Nature study linked the loss of tails in apes to a small stretch of DNA inserted into a gene called TBXT.

What do primatologists call the chimpanzee who dominates the community?

The alpha male: allies help a chimp win and keep that rank, since coalitions let him dominate rivals he could never beat alone.

What can a chimpanzee do with its feet that a human can't?

Grasp with its big toe: such hand-like feet once led naturalists to class apes as Quadrumana, 'four-handed', and humans apart as Bimana.

How do chimpanzees often greet each other or make up after a fight?

With a kiss or an embrace: touching eases tension, reassuring upset chimps and calming aggressive ones, which helps cement their social bonds.

Which human virus evolved from a simian virus carried by central chimpanzees?

HIV-1 came from SIVcpz in central chimpanzees; eastern chimps carry their own strain too, but it has never been found in people.

Which future politician starred opposite a chimpanzee in the 1951 comedy Bedtime for Bonzo?

Ronald Reagan played a professor raising Bonzo to prove upbringing beats heredity; the chimp died soon after, so the 1952 sequel used another.

The first chimpanzee fossils ever found turned up in 2005 in which country famed for early human fossils?

Kenya: the 500,000-year-old teeth lay in the Rift Valley beside fossils of an extinct Homo species, so chimps and early humans once lived side by side.

Chimpanzees split from the human lineage about how long ago?

About 7 million years ago; 4.4-million-year-old Ardipithecus then undercut the old habit of treating living chimps as stand-ins for our ancestors.

What do chimpanzees fashion from leaves to get drinking water?

Sponge: a chimp chews leaves until soft, then dips the wad into water to soak it up and drink.

Humans have one fewer chromosome pair than chimpanzees because two chromosomes did what?

Fused: joined end to end, they formed human chromosome 2, which still carries telomere remnants where the two tips met.

Which famous artist reportedly hung a painting by Congo the chimpanzee on his studio wall?

Pablo Picasso reportedly got it as a gift; in 2005 three of Congo's paintings sold at auction for about $25,000, far above their estimate.

What does a chimpanzee's wide, toothy grin usually signal?

Fear: chimps flash that closed, toothy grin when frightened, while a playful chimp instead shows an open-mouthed smile.

In Gordon Gallup's 1970 study, chimps showed self-recognition using what?

A mirror: chimps marked with red dye recognised their reflections, yet monkeys given the same test showed no such ability.

Where do chimpanzees sleep at night?

In a fresh tree nest built each evening: since each weaned chimp builds its own, field teams count nests to estimate how many chimps a forest holds.

Which food makes up the bulk of a wild chimpanzee's diet?

Fruit: chimps swallow seeds and carry them long distances, making them important seed dispersers for regenerating forests.

Which monkey is the most common mammal prey of hunting chimpanzees?

The red colobus: males eat far more meat than females, who hunt it less often and tend to target safer, low-cost prey.

Wild chimpanzees at Ngogo, Uganda, have a life expectancy at birth of about how many years?

33 years is within the human hunter-gatherer range; Ngogo's abundant, steady food supply appears to explain why its chimps outlive most others.

In Mahale Mountains National Park, chimpanzees were seen dragging which predator's cub from its den and killing it?

The leopard: though leopards prey on chimps, about 33 Mahale chimps surrounded one's den and dragged out and killed its cub.

Chimpanzees and African elephants both live in which kind of society?

Fission-fusion: the community splits into small, shifting parties, which tend to grow when a female is in estrus.

In chimpanzee society, which sex usually leaves its birth community at adolescence?

Females: most move to a neighbouring community at adolescence, but some never leave the one they were born into.

Some scientists argued the Gombe Chimpanzee War's violence was caused by researchers doing what?

Feeding the chimps: critics blamed Goodall's feeding stations, yet a 2014 study of 18 communities found killing rates unrelated to human impacts.

Which loud call do chimpanzees use to keep in contact over long distances?

The pant-hoot: each chimp's version is individually distinctive, so listeners can tell who is calling from far away.

What is chimpanzee 'drumming'?

Beating hands and feet on tree trunks: chimps pick big trees with broad buttress roots, apparently chosen so the sound carries far.

At Taï, hunting chimpanzees take on which set of specialised roles?

Drivers, blockers, chasers and ambushers: monkeys escape lone hunters in Taï's dense canopy, while Gombe chimps, in patchier forest, often hunt alone.

Ayumu, a chimpanzee at Kyoto University, out-performed human adults at what task?

Recalling briefly flashed numbers: but critics noted he'd had far more practice, and in a 2009 study two practised humans matched his accuracy.

Why is chimpanzee laughter hard for humans to recognise?

It sounds like breathing and panting: chimps laugh on both in- and out-breaths, while human laughter rides mostly on the out-breath.

Chimpanzees have used stone tools since at least how long ago?

4,300 years: hammerstones dug up in Côte d'Ivoire's Taï Forest still carry starch from the nuts ancient chimps cracked.

The first non-human tool-maker on record was a Kasakela chimp that modified a twig to do what?

Fish termites out of a mound: Louis Leakey famously replied that we must now redefine tool, redefine man, or accept chimpanzees as human.

Chimpanzees in Senegal were found sharpening sticks with their teeth to spear which animal?

Bushbabies: at Fongoli, females and young chimps hunt with these spears more often than adult males, the usual hunters elsewhere.

A 2022 study reported chimpanzees crushing what and applying it to their own and others' wounds?

Insects: no animal had been reported putting insects on wounds before, and dabbing them on others' injuries hints at caring for groupmates.

Roughly how many signs did the Gardners report Washoe had learned after 51 months?

About 150: though humans limited their signing around her adopted son Loulis, he still picked up dozens of signs, reportedly from Washoe.

What did Herbert Terrace conclude from videotapes of Nim Chimpsky?

Mostly copied teachers: the tapes showed most of Nim's signs were prompted by a teacher's signs, overturning Terrace's own early belief that Nim was learning language.

Ham, the first chimpanzee launched into space, flew on which mission on 31 January 1961?

Mercury-Redstone 2: Ham's suborbital flight put him in space about ten weeks before Yuri Gagarin became the first human to get there.

Ham's 1961 flight helped show that astronauts could do what in space?

Perform simple tasks: Ham pulled levers on cue during the flight, and his mission paved the way for Alan Shepard's own flight three months later.

Who accompanied Jane Goodall when colonial rules barred her from Gombe alone?

Her mother: Vanne agreed to come along, and Goodall later credited her with encouraging a career in primatology, a field then dominated by men.

Which chimp was the first Jane Goodall saw using a tool at Gombe?

David Greybeard: Goodall named the chimps she studied, an unconventional choice when researchers usually gave their subjects numbers.

In which country is Gombe Stream National Park, site of Goodall's research?

Tanzania: after the forest around Gombe was cleared, Goodall began working with nearby villages in 1994 to replant the hills and protect the chimps' habitat.

Cheeta the chimpanzee was the sidekick of which film hero?

Tarzan: a Palm Springs chimp was billed for years as the films' Cheeta, until his biographer found holes that cast his Hollywood career into doubt.

Bubbles, the chimpanzee who drank tea with the mayor of Osaka in 1987, was the pet of which singer?

Michael Jackson: as Bubbles grew too strong to be a pet, he went to an animal trainer, and since 2005 he has lived at the Center for Great Apes in Florida.

From 1926 to 1972, which zoo staged a chimpanzees' tea party for visitors?

London Zoo: other zoos copied the show, but as attitudes to animals changed, dressing chimps up for crowds fell out of favour.

In the 1972 film Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, which chimpanzee leads the ape rebellion?

Caesar: an early version had the apes kill the tyrannical Governor Breck, but the producers changed that ending before release.

Robert A. Heinlein's story 'Jerry Was a Man' concerns a genetically enhanced chimpanzee doing what?

Suing for better treatment: Jerry, a modified chimp trained for farm labour, fights in court to be treated as human rather than as property.

In which US state did a pet chimpanzee named Travis maul his owner's friend in 2009?

Connecticut: in 2011 his victim, Charla Nash, received a full face transplant at a Boston hospital.

How does the IUCN Red List classify the chimpanzee as a species?

Endangered: people are clearing the forests chimps depend on, cutting their populations into isolated pockets.

A 2017 study found western chimpanzee numbers fell by roughly what share from 1990 to 2014?

About 80%: farming and new roads were among the many pressures, opening remote forests to more encounters with people.

In 2015, where did the NIH say its last research chimpanzees would go?

Sanctuaries: several hundred had retired in 2013, but 50 were held back in case a public health emergency required research.

In 1966, Jane Goodall's Gombe chimpanzees were hit by an epidemic of which suspected human disease?

Polio: the epidemic killed some of Gombe's chimps and left others partly paralysed, some of them for life.

Santino, a chimpanzee at a Swedish zoo, gathered stones from his moat each morning to do what later?

Throw at visitors: he piled the stones calmly while the crowds were away, a sign, researchers argued, that chimps can plan for future events.

Like gorillas, chimpanzees on the ground usually move on all fours using which style of locomotion?

Knuckle-walking: scientists once thought humans descended from a knuckle-walking ancestor, but fossil and wrist studies have challenged that.

Wild chimpanzees swallow rough, hairy leaves whole, apparently to help rid themselves of what?

Intestinal worms: the unchewed leaves may snag the worms with their hairs or speed them through the gut, and worms turn up in dung beside the leaves.

Roughly how many chimpanzees are thought to survive in the wild?

About 250,000: logging, farming and diseases such as Ebola have been shrinking their populations.

Many chimpanzees in Uganda's Budongo Forest have been maimed by what?

Poachers' snares: the traps are usually set to catch other animals, but chimps blunder into them and can be left permanently maimed.

A 2016 study found ancient gene flow into central and eastern chimpanzees from which species?

The bonobo: chimps live north of the Congo River and bonobos south of it, yet their ancestors apparently met and interbred.

Why are male chimps that kill unrelated infants usually thought to do it?

So the mother breeds again sooner: losing a nursing infant brings her back into breeding condition, giving the killer a chance to father her next one.

Among grown chimpanzees, social grooming happens most often between which pairing?

Adult males: good relations matter because males team up to patrol their territory's borders against rival communities.