Mbali Mbali - Chimpanzee Fun Facts

Chimpanzee Fun Facts

Chimpanzees belong to the family of apes along with gorillas, bonobos and orang-utans. Though all these animals belong to the same family, chimpanzees are closer to humans than any other animal.
They have hands and fingers, which facilitate a strong grip and allow them to pick up objects much like human beings.
Young chimps learn to create tools from objects in their environment by watching others; they use sticks to extract termites to eat and crumple leaves to soak up water to drink.
Chimpanzees and humans share a DNA similarity of about 98.4%.
The lifespan of a chimpanzee is approximately fifty years. A baby chimpanzee lives with its mother for about five to ten years after birth.
They are omnivorous and their principal diet is leaves, buds and flowers of various plants. Sometimes they eat very selectively, for example they may choose only the ripest fruit, which they pick with their hands. Their diet also includes berries and seeds.
Chimps supplement their diet with meat, such as young antelopes. Their most frequent victims, however, are other primates such as young baboons, Colobus monkeys and Blue monkeys.
Chimpanzees face the greatest threat from human beings and leopards.
They are also prone to diseases, which also afflict human beings. Chimpanzees are also being used for biomedical testing and entertainment, which further jeopardises this species' survival.
They are found mainly in the tropical forests of Africa. Approximately fifty years ago there were somewhere around one million chimpanzees in these forests but now they are gradually moving towards extinction with only 150,000 to 175,000 left in the wildernesses. The decrease in the Chimpanzee population is largely due to deforestation and increase in the "bush meat" trade.
Chimpanzees spend as much time on the ground as they do in trees though most of their eating and sleeping takes place in the trees. They wake at dawn and descend from their night nest to begin their day. They are more active during the moonlit nights.
Chimpanzees live in large communities of approximately 15 to 20 in a group and 'converse' with each other using grunts, screams and hoots. They are one of the noisiest animals and they are also very sociable and warm when they interact with each other. They kiss, hug and also show anger like human beings.
By following wild chimps through the forests, scientists discovered that chimps use medicinal plants to treat themselves for illness and injury. Scientists have isolated an anti-tumor agent in one such plant!
The differences between monkeys and apes are easy to identify once you know what to look for. Apes do not have a tail and are generally larger than most other primates. They have a more upright body posture as well. Apes rely more on vision than on smell and have a short broad nose rather than a snout, as Old World monkeys do. Apes have a larger brain relative to the body size than other primates do.