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Quick Facts About Chimps
- Chimpanzees are called our closest living relative because we share all but 1.4% of our DNA. The chimpanzees' closest relation is us; not gorillas or orangutans.
- Chimpanzees used to live throughout tropical Africa in an area almost the size of the United States that included 25 countries. Today, they are extinct in four of those countries and extinction can be expected soon in another five countries.
- Fifty years ago, there were probably a million living chimpanzees in Africa. Today, chimpanzees are an endangered species with as few as 150,000 left in the wild. Read more about this topic at Karl Ammann's site on bushmeat: www.karlammann.com
- There are approximately 2,900 chimpanzees in the United States. 1,700 of these chimps are used for biomedical testing, 500 live in zoos, approximately 500 live in sanctuaries, and about 200 are used for entertainment.
- Wild chimpanzees live in large communities of 15 to 120 individuals and communicate with one another through a complex and subtle system of vocalizations, facial expressions, body postures and gestures.
- Newborn chimpanzees are entirely dependent on their mothers for warmth, protection, transportation and nourishment. Chimpanzees in the wild nurse for 5 years and enter adulthood at about 13 years of age. Chimpanzee mothers may enjoy life-long bonds with their adult sons and daughters.
- Chimpanzees can live for more than 50 years.
- Chimpanzees make and use tools, such as cracking of nuts with sticks and stones, probing for honey and insects with twigs, and using wads of crumbled leaves to sponge drinking water from hard to reach places.
- Some chimpanzees have learned to 'talk' using American Sign Language, symbols, and computer graphics. Some have even combined signs to come up with new words. When the famous sign language chimpanzee, Washoe, first saw a swan, she called it a 'water bird'. Another chimp, Moja, described Alka Seltzer as a 'listen drink'.
- Like humans, chimpanzees have emotions similar to those we call joy, anger, grief, sorrow, pleasure, boredom, and depression. They also comfort and reassure one another by kissing and embracing.
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