Pan Troglodytes, An Ape

“In their natural homes in the wild, chimpanzees humans’ closest living genetic relatives”, who are more like us than they’re like gorillas are never separated from their families and troops . “Profoundly social beings, they spend every day together exploring, crafting and using tools to solve problems, foraging, playing, grooming each other, and making soft nests for sleeping each night” . They care deeply for their families and forge lifelong friendships . Chimpanzee mothers are loving and protective, nursing their infants and sharing their nests with them for four to six years . They have excellent memories and share cultural traditions with their children and peers . They empathize with one another and console their friends when they’re upset . They help others, even at a personal cost to themselves . When one of another

Primates are one of the most interesting mammals on earth, not only because of their complex social structures, but because they hold so many similar characteristics to humans. Primates are often cited as our closest living relatives and on two separate occasions I observed four separate species of primates at the San Diego Zoo that can justify their use of their physical characteristics and behaviors that may be similar as well as different to the other primates and ours.

What makes a primate a primate? A primate is defined by its many incredible features. A primate is a mammal that has certain characteristics such as: flexible fingers and toes, opposable thumbs, flatter face than other mammals, eyes that face forward and spaced close together, large and complex cerebrum, and social animals. What makes a primate a primate is its characteristics. Some of the physical features primates are identified by is their teeth, snouts, eyes, ears, arms, legs, fingers, and toes. Human evolution is a big part of humans being primates, and having similar features and characteristics make humans to be considered to be a primate, but both humans and non-humans have differences.

-The bonobo is the most recently discovered great ape in modern times.  It was revealed in 1929 by German anatomist Ernest Schwarz that a skull once thought belonging to a juvenile chimpanzee was in fact a new subspecies of chimpanzee known now as the Pan paniscus, or bonobo. (Waal 6)  During the Pleistocene epoch approximately 1.5 million years ago, the Congo River was formed in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. (San Diego Zoo 2)  The river geographically segregated groups and individual chimpanzees south of the river resulting in these chimps being reproductively isolated.  Allopatric speciation took place as a response to new

Not only did Jane discover their tool making abilities, but also they eat both plants and animals, such as bush pigs and termites (Goodall 1971). This fascinated many other primatologists because chimps were once thought of as herbivores. Jane also realized chimpanzees seem to express the same feelings humans do, though it is not certain (Goodall 598). Examples of such emotions are love, confusion, fear, and aggression. They often show love and care to

Thus, I was able to observe some similarities among these species. The way the female chimp used tools, and her fingers to grab food, how she used to be on her feet, freeing her hands, groom her child, educate her offspring, sleep with him while snuggling, use a lot of face emotions to convey a message to an individual; she smiled at her baby, laughed when playing, and tickling him, remind me of human. She also has a flat pink face, hands’ palm, and feet sole as humans do. Furthermore, the gorilla was also really human when he protected his eyes from the intense sunrays, following the movement of the sun, and sat in the shade, mated with a female, scratched his head, and bottom, and put his finger in his nose. I think that these humans’ pattern appeared for similar reasons as in the Primates. For instance, when the gorilla scratches his bottom, it is because the area is itchy, and he wants to remove what is indisposing him. In addition, the mother chimp educates her kid to transmit knowledge throughout generation, which is the same for humans, who go to school.

They also share with females having sexual swellings and also with high-ranking females. Chimpanzees barter a limited commodity such as meat for other services like alliances, sex, grooming through which they are engaging in a very simple and primitive form of a currency exchange. It may be that the two chimpanzee cultures 2,000 kilometres apart have developed their distinct uses of meat as a social currency. In one place meat is used as a reward for cooperation, in the other as a manipulative tool of nepotism. Such systems are commonplace in all human societies, and their roots may be seen in chimpanzees’ market economy,

An observational study conducted, concluded that wild capuchins use anvils and stone pounding tools as a means to facilitate nut-cracking . In the study, a group of ten wild capuchin monkeys where observed in a habitat that is scarce in food, aside from palms. There are different types of palm nuts, larger ones with an oval shape and smaller ones that are as small as 2.5 to 3 cm in diameter. It is interesting to note that many different anvil sites were observed, and what is more interesting is that on the anvil sites, river pebbles were seen and since these are not usually found in the area, it can be assumed that capuchins transport their stones to the anvil sites. An abundance of palms, yet otherwise limited food, has contributed to tool use for nut-cracking becoming a common routine. As a result of the study, wild capuchins were directly observed using anvils as tools for stone pounding. Additionally, characteristic depressions on anvils as well as palm shells and stone pounding tools leftovers indicate nut-cracking. Capuchin monkey choose anvil sites that provide a flat surface to facilitate nut-cracking, often the anvils used by capuchins are made of sandstone or siltstone, but they can also be boulders and fallen trees Essentially anything in the capuchin’s vicinity, that could provide a suitable substrate. When capuchins crack palm nuts, they typically hold the selected stone using both hands and stand in a bipedal

The use of tools comes to practice everyday as chimpanzees collect food from the jungle. Goodall describes how chimpanzees in Tanzania’s Gombe National Park use straw and blades of grass poke holes to hunt for termites by “squatting beside the termite nest, pushing and withdrawing the long grass stem through a hole”. Moreover, during Gooddal’s research, she observed chimpanzees modifying tools, such as small leafy twigs, thus showing the beginnings of tool making. Chimpanzees in West Africa also use tools to get honey from underground bees’ nests. Recently, scientists found out that chimpanzees living in West Savannah use deadly spears from sticks and hand crafted tools to hunt for small animals.

Chimpanzees (Figure 1) are the closest living relatives to us, and they share 99 percent of our DNA (1). Chimpanzees have distinct group territoriality. Male chimpanzees “patrol” near the boundary between the two ranges, at that time they move very carefully and quietly, and they can cease to listen and observe the range of their neighbors. Patrolling individuals are likely to face cruel and violent

Many attributes found in humans are also found in chimps. Similar to humans, chimps have long childhoods which involve long term affection, bonds and learning. Like humans, chimps display nonverbal communication through Kissing, holding hands and fist shaking. They also show emotion and personality which is thought to be a human attribute (Goodall, 2002). They say we are only 4% smarter than chimps, what defines smart? If we are so smart, why are we destroying our planet? Chimps have been doing the same thing for millions of years without damaging their environment. Maybe we should not ask who is smarter, but who is wiser.

A very close relative, Chimpanzees, have been known to make their own tools and improvise as well. Jane Goodall once said, “just as human cultures use different utensils for food, so do different groups of chimps”. She noticed that one group of chimps would go “termite fishing”, which means the chimps would use two sticks to capture termites to eat. Another group of chimpanzees would use a rock as a hammer, and an anvil, or a hard surface, to break open nut shells. When drinking water from holes in trees, she noticed that a group of chimpanzees would use chewed leaves to act like a sponge, and then simply suck the water out of the leaves once the water was collected.

Chimpanzees however, have a symmetrical bone pattern because when they grab objects such as branches, the forces align evenly across the thumb (Gibbons, 2015). Since chimpanzees do not use the precision grip, they cannot use technology to the same extent as humans. Also, this lack of mobility in their hands affects their strength as well (Balter,

     Jane Goodall’s books, Through a Window, In the Shadow of Man, and The Chimpanzees of Gombe, recount her many years as an observer of chimpanzees and other species of monkeys. In Through a Window, she gives her account of thirty years with chimpanzees in the village of Gombe, off of Lake Tanganyika. During those thirty years with her son and husband, she observed and researched the chimpanzees with the help of other researchers. This book is a collection of the observations and data, in addition to the emotions she felt during this era. The theme of Through a Window is that chimpanzees have very human characteristics and feelings, and she

Ant-dipping is a method in which a long stick is used to capture ants that is practised by only certain groups of chimpanzees use ant-dipping whereas other do not (Humle et al. 2013). Furthermore, chimpanzees at a site called Gombe would remove the ants from a long stick using their hands whereas those at another site, Tai, would directly use their mouth to eat the ants captured on a small stick (Laland et al. 2013). The variations in the way these chimpanzees eat, the tools that they use, short as opposed to long sticks, and the absence of this tool use in certain species of chimpanzees can be argued strictly as culturally