chimp
Updates from the Islands
Tchindzoulou
The dense forest of Tchindzoulou Island is now home to 14 chimpanzees transferred from the original Tchimpounga sanctuary site over the last six months. Life has changed dramatically for these chimps. Today, they can roam freely, feeling the wet earth under their feet, smelling the scents from the lush vegetation, and listening to the island’s mysterious sounds while they explore their new surroundings.
Researching Wild Chimpanzees
Because chimpanzees are so biologically and socially similar to humans, they offer us a great deal of insights into our evolutionary past, as well as into our future. As we observe and document the world of chimpanzees, we learn more about our own behaviors and social patterns, our impact on the ecosystem, and even our ability to spread disease.
Fast Facts
10 Things to Know About Chimpanzees
- Chimpanzees are one of our closest living relatives. In fact, humans and chimpanzees share 95 to 98 percent of the same DNA!
- Chimpanzees make and use tools. In fact, they use more tools for more purposes than any other creature except human beings. Visit the video page to watch videos of tool use at Gombe National Park in Tanzania.
Chimpanzees & Bushmeat: 101
Raising awareness is a powerful means
State of the Wild Chimpanzee
We stand on the threshold of a future without chimpanzees in the wild.
The IUCN/World Conservation Union Red List of Threatened Species says each of the species of African great apes – chimpanzees, gorillas, and bonobos – as endangered. African apes are largely confined to the relatively intact forests of Equatorial Africa as their last remaining stronghold. Chimpanzees are likely extinct in 4 of their 25 range countries (Gambia, Burkina Faso, Togo and Benin).
Communication
Chimpanzees communicate in many ways, most notably through sounds and calls. They also communicate with each other through touch, facial expressions and body language.
Biology & Habitat
- Biologically, chimpanzees are more closely related to humans than they are to another species of great apes—gorillas. In fact, humans and chimpanzees share about 95 percent to 98 percent of the same DNA.
- Chimpanzees can catch and be infected with human diseases. Read more on this topic.
- In the wild, chimpanzees seldom live past age 50. Some captive individuals, however, have lived past the age of 60.
Tool Use, Hunting & Other Discoveries
In 1960, Jane Goodall traveled to what was then Gombe Stream Chimpanzee Reserve in the British protectorate of Tanganyika to study the behavior of the wild chimpanzees. The groundbreaking discoveries she made in Gombe became the foundation of future chimpanzee behavioral research and dramatically changed how animal behavior is studied.
Chimpanzees
At the turn of the 20th Century, they numbered between 1 and 2 million . . . now there are estimated to be fewer than 300,000 chimpanzees remaining in the wild. Incredibly—over the past 100 years—we may have lost as many as 1.7 million of the chimpanzees that roamed the forests of Africa.
When a 26-year-old Jane Goodall first arrived at the then Gombe Stream Chimpanzee Reserve in the British protectorate of Tanganyika, she brought only, her binoculars and notebooks.
