60 Fun Facts About Chimpanzee

What is the chimpanzee's scientific name?

Pan paniscus is the bonobo, the only other species in the genus; the two are humans' closest living relatives.

Which animal is the only other living species in the genus Pan alongside the chimpanzee?

It was long called the pygmy chimpanzee and was only recognised as a separate species in 1933.

A 1738 magazine glossed the word 'chimpanze' as meaning what in an Angolan language?

Modern Vili, a Kongo language, has the comparable word ci-mpenzi; the short form 'chimp' dates from the late 1870s.

The chimpanzee's genus name Pan is taken from what?

The species name troglodytes comes from the Troglodytae, a mythical race of cave-dwellers.

How many extant great ape species are there in the family Hominidae, humans included?

Three orangutans, two gorillas, the chimpanzee, the bonobo and Homo sapiens.

Who coined the genus name Pan in 1816?

Blumenbach had classified the chimp as Simia troglodytes by 1775; Oken also coined Panthera for the big cats the same year.

In which year was the 'pygmy chimpanzee' formally recognised as a species distinct from the chimpanzee?

The two are thought to have split from each other close to 2 million years ago.

The only known Pan fossils, three teeth found in Kenya in 2005, date to roughly when?

They turned up in the same area as Homo fossils, showing chimps and humans shared the East African Rift in the Middle Pleistocene.

Chimpanzees and bonobos are estimated to have split from the human lineage how long ago?

At least 24 hominin species are thought to have appeared on the human side since the split.

How many recognised chimpanzee subspecies are there?

Central, western, Nigeria-Cameroon and eastern, with a fifth (southeastern) proposed by Colin Groves but not accepted by the IUCN.

How many pairs of chromosomes does a chimpanzee have?

Humans have 23 because two ancestral chromosomes fused into human chromosome 2.

The 2005 draft chimpanzee genome showed roughly what share of DNA sequences shared with humans?

A fuller 2025 genome found the gap widens to 12-13% once insertions, deletions and non-coding material are counted.

How much do wild male chimpanzees weigh on average?

Females average about 30 kg; captive individuals have reached 136 kg.

Chimpanzee muscles are roughly how much stronger per unit of weight than human muscles?

The edge comes from a higher share of fast-twitch fibres, an adaptation for climbing and swinging.

The chimpanzee brain is roughly how much smaller than a human's?

It still contains equivalents of Broca's and Wernicke's areas, the human language-processing regions.

Where do chimpanzees sleep at night?

Adults sleep alone; only infants and juveniles share their mother's nest.

A Budongo Forest study found chimpanzees spent what share of feeding time on fruit?

Nearly 85% of that fruit was ripe; leaves took another 19% of feeding time.

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

Meat is a small part of the diet, and males eat far more of it than females.

A 2017 study put the average lifespan of Ngogo chimpanzees at nearly how many years?

That is inside the range for human hunter-gatherers; at Taï the average is only 13, and captives have passed 60.

Which big cat preys on chimpanzees, and is sometimes harassed and robbed of kills by them?

Chimps have been recorded stealing leopard kills and even killing cubs; lions have taken at least four at Mahale.

What kind of society do chimpanzee communities have, with groups constantly splitting and re-merging?

Communities can reach 200, but day-to-day parties are usually six or fewer.

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

So the males in a community tend to be related to each other, and they patrol its borders in coalitions.

The Gombe Chimpanzee War, in which one faction wiped out another, ran over which years?

It began as a dominance struggle between two males and ended with the victim group's members dead or missing.

How long is a chimpanzee's gestation?

Infants are weaned at four to five years and reach adulthood at around 15.

What is the most common call made by adult chimpanzees?

It has four parts: soft hoos, a build-up, a screaming climax and a let-down; tonal barks are reserved for large snakes.

What is chimpanzee 'drumming'?

They drum when travelling, displaying, begging and on spotting members of other communities.

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

When a monkey is caught, the meat is shared among the hunting party and even bystanders.

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

The digits appeared for under a quarter of a second, and he tapped their positions in ascending order.

Why is chimpanzee laughter hard for humans to recognise?

It is produced by alternating inhalations and exhalations; chimps stay ticklish for life, especially in the armpits and belly.

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

Nearly every wild population uses tools of some kind, from termite-fishing twigs to leaf sponges.

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

That was David Greybeard, observed by Jane Goodall at Gombe; Taï chimps just use their hands for termites.

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

They jab the sharpened sticks into tree holes; an eastern chimp has been seen using a modified branch to catch a squirrel.

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

It joins evidence of chimps caring for dying elders and mothers carrying dead infants for days.

How many signs was the chimpanzee Washoe reported to have learned after 51 months with the Gardners?

She was later credited with over 350 and reportedly taught signs to her adopted son Loulis.

Nim Chimpsky, the sign-language chimp, was jokingly named after which linguist?

Herbert Terrace, who trained him, later re-analysed the tapes and concluded Nim's signing was mostly prompting and imitation.

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

He was 'No. 65' until he landed safely, then named for the Holloman Aerospace Medical Center that trained him.

Ham the astrochimp was named after an acronym for a laboratory at which US Air Force base?

The name also honoured Lt Col Hamilton 'Ham' Blackshear, commander of the aeromedical lab in New Mexico.

Jane Goodall began her chimpanzee research at Gombe Stream in which year?

She was mentored by Louis Leakey and went on to more than six decades of study of the Kasakela community.

What was the name of the grey-chinned chimp who was the first to approach Jane Goodall at Gombe?

A carving of him sits beside her plaque on the Tree of Life at Disney's Animal Kingdom.

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

It sits on the shore of Lake Tanganyika.

Cheeta the chimpanzee was the sidekick of which film hero?

No chimp appears in Edgar Rice Burroughs' original Tarzan novels; the character was a Hollywood invention played by chimps of both sexes.

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

He was bought from a Texas research facility and moved to Neverland Ranch in 1988.

From 1926 to 1972, which zoo held a daily chimpanzees' tea party?

Other zoos copied it; animal-rights groups eventually got such acts stopped as abusive.

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

It was the third sequel to the 1968 original.

Robert A. Heinlein's 1947 story 'Jerry Was a Man' concerns a genetically enhanced chimpanzee doing what?

It is one of the few fictions to make a chimp the central character rather than a comic sidekick like Judy in Daktari.

In which US state did the pet chimpanzee Travis maul a woman in 2009, leaving her without hands, eyes and nose?

Chimps' strength and sharp teeth make even adult humans vulnerable; six cases of chimps taking human babies are documented.

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

Between 170,000 and 300,000 survive; the western subspecies alone is rated Critically Endangered.

Which chimpanzee subspecies carries the IUCN's most severe threat rating?

Its range once ran from Senegal to the Niger River; the largest remnants are in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.

Roughly how many chimpanzees were housed in US facilities as of 2024?

They live in research centres, zoos and sanctuaries for animals retired from laboratories.

Jane Goodall witnessed a 1966 outbreak of which disease kill about one in seven of the Gombe chimpanzees?

She later argued that vaccines could have prevented five chimp epidemics since the mid-20th century.

The Hemba people of the Congo wear chimpanzee masks with a disturbing smile at what kind of event?

The masks represent 'the awful reality of death'; the Gio of Liberia use theirs to warn young people about bad behaviour.

What did Dutch anatomist Nicolaes Tulp call an African ape brought from Angola in 1641?

The confusion between African and Asian apes was not cleared up until Peter Camper dissected both in the 1770s.

Like gorillas and bonobos, chimpanzees move on all fours using which style of locomotion?

The habit probably evolved independently in Pan and Gorilla, and their muscles are about 50% stronger per unit of weight than ours.

The species name troglodytes was borrowed from the Troglodytae, a mythical race of what?

Troglodyte was first proposed as the genus name too, but a genus of wren already had priority on it.

Roughly how many chimpanzees are estimated to survive across their whole range?

The central subspecies, or tschego, accounts for about 140,000 of them; habitat loss, poaching and disease are the main threats.

What is the alternative name for the central chimpanzee, Pan troglodytes troglodytes?

It ranges from Cameroon through Gabon and both Congos, and is the most numerous of the four recognised subspecies.

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

That introgression happened between 200,000 and 550,000 years ago, long after the two Pan species split roughly 2 million years ago.

Why do male chimpanzees kill unrelated infants, according to researchers?

Victims are often eaten; females occasionally commit infanticide too, though it appears uncommon.

In which age range does a chimpanzee's juvenile stage fall, when it feeds and sleeps on its own?

Weaning comes at four to five, and even independent juveniles remain emotionally bonded to their mothers.

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

Grooming helps build coalitions, and higher-ranking males receive more of it; male coalitions also patrol territory borders.