The species with which human beings have the most similarity and with whom they share the greatest percentage of the genome will be described in this entry, the chimpanzee Characteristics, their diet, behavior, habitat and other points that will allow us to find similarities or differences with people.
Chimpanzee
There are several species of chimpanzees, which belong to the genus Bread which brings together a series of primates that have a fairly broad evolutionary line, beginning at least seven and eight million years ago, although they have existed for 500.000 years. They are related to gorillas and homo sapiens. A lot has been studied about these species to try to discover how they separated, what characteristics they have in common, who is their ancestor and how the changes in their structure occurred.
Numerous studies have verified the compatibility of the genome of people with chimpanzees, showing that they share almost 99% of it, although the Characteristics of the human being are different from the characteristics of the chimpanzee. However, they share many things such as belonging to the family hominid, to order primates, which in turn is part of the class mammalia, Yarn Chordata of the kingdom Animals.
Chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans, gibbons, and humans all diverged from their common ancestor millions of years ago, each of these species having a different timeline divergence. Chimpanzees and humans are the most similar today, although millions of years ago there were crosses between these species. This could be discovered as the fossils found were studied, of the chimpanzee only in 2005 could some be found.
Habitat
Chimpanzees have been distributed throughout the world, taking into account that they have inhabited this planet for many years. Originally they were found throughout the African continent and little by little they expanded to inhabit many geographical areas. In any case, they prefer those ecosystems in which the climate is tropical and the vegetation is very lush and abundant, these places allow them to get food, shelter, rest and protect themselves from other predators.
For many years they have not been distributed as in ancient times due to human activity, so they remain in the forests and savannahs. However, depending on the subspecies they are located in one part or another, four subspecies are described in many books that describe them and each one has a preferred ecosystem in which they live.
For example, the western chimpanzee that in a group is kept in Sierra Leone - West Africa, specifically in the south of that country. They are also found in Nigeria and the Ivory Coast. Eastern chimpanzees are found in Burundi, Tanzania, the Congo, Uganda, and other regions of Africa, while the common chimpanzee is found in greater numbers in Nigeria and Cameroon, although there are many individuals living in parks around the world.
The central chimpanzee is in Gabon, the Congo, Cameroon and others. Currently chimpanzees can be found in jungles, mountain forests or plains of West or Central Africa, in the countries mentioned and also in Zaire, Gambia and Sudan. The largest number of chimpanzees are found in Gabon and the Congo. It is there that some studies have been started to discover characteristics of the chimpanzee, then some were taken to other places to study them better.
Features
To begin, a list of certain characteristics of the chimpanzee will be presented to then talk a little about the behavior, feeding and reproduction of these specimens.
- The average life expectancy of this species is about 50 years in the wild, if conditions are favorable in the habitat in which they are found. While chimpanzees that are in captivity cared for by people can live up to 65 years.
- These animals can measure an average of 1.60 meters tall if they stand on their two hind legs, in terms of weight, males can weigh 70 or 80 kilos while females weigh about 10 less. Some do not surpass other people in size, but they do in strength.
- Their entire body is covered with black or brown fur, except for the soles of their feet, their face, the palms of their hands and some parts of their ears. These hairs are lost as they age, although they can also have white hair.
- They have much longer arms than homo sapiens and tend to walk by leaning on their knuckles, this allows them to move more quickly and carry their young more easily and swing from one branch to another more easily.
- They are a species that lives on the ground all their lives, so they are terrestrial mammals, although they also live in trees where they create nests in which they sleep to stay away from other predators with which they share the habitat.
- Their hands and feet differ from those of humans in that the thumbs are opposable, which makes it easier for them to grasp branches and trees, as well as the use of some tools that they themselves create for various things.
- This species is in second place in the classification of the most intelligent species in the world, surpassed of course by human beings. The similarities they have with people range from the way they walk to their behavior and ability to learn.
- It is possible to divide this species into four subspecies described so far: Pan troglodytes troglodytes or central chimpanzee, most of them are all black in the face and look a lot like gorillas. The second subspecies is: Pan troglodytes vellerosus or Nigeria-Camnerun chimpanzee, which is the subspecies with the smallest number of existing individuals.
The third subspecies is Pan troglodytes verus or western chimpanzee that has a slightly lighter face and finally the eastern chimpanzee or Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii, which differs from the others because of the long and shiny coat it has. In addition to certain physical features that differentiate them, they are distributed in different parts of Africa, as mentioned in the habitat section.
Behavior
In this section, both the intelligence and the lifestyle they lead will be taken into account. Above all, this species has shown the ability to design quite sophisticated hunting strategies compared to other species, where cooperation with other individuals has been very profitable. to enhance not only food but survival.
Many studies with chimpanzees in captivity have revealed that they are capable of learning symbols, numbers and other kinds of things, understand the social status they have in their population, manipulate or deceive other chimpanzees and people, although they can also create a relationship of cooperation with the latter because they understand only some aspects of the language that people use.
Hand in hand with cooperative behavior and understanding of the social status that their group lifestyle has is quite shared, in addition to hunting for food they protect each other, in case a mother dies due to any of the factors that can cause their death, other chimpanzees can take their place and take care of the young that have been abandoned, the same happens with the parents.
Their social structure can be a bit complicated and vary from individuals, grouping more adult females and their offspring with few males, chimpanzees alone, only males or communities in which there are both males and females and their young. What is maintained is that the center of this structure is held by the males, they have a superior hierarchy in the group since they are in charge of taking care of the others and looking for food, alone or in small groups, for which they are the who dominate in the group.
Those are just some general examples of what these animals are capable of doing, there are many specific situations that can explain other characteristics of the chimpanzee, what they are capable of doing and learning, many studies around the world explain them in detail, since either based on the characteristics of the chimpanzee and its individual behavior or that of a whole group, taking into account that they are kept in groups of 30 or up to 250 individuals of the same species.
Another example that can be given is how they use tools to solve everyday problems related to food or survival, for example, they use long sticks to dig and short sticks to get ends, they have also created spears with their teeth: they choose a stick and sharpen it in its tip. Chimpanzees are not the only ones that use tools to solve everyday situations, little by little more species that use them were discovered.
Their communication system can also be taken into account, they have a way of communicating through sounds and gestures they make with their hands, which facilitates the learning of symbols. This is a whole topic about the relationship between both things, the truth is that it is a fairly advanced system and that it is very similar to the one used by homo sapiens. They are capable of making sounds of up to 13 different tones, to complement the gestures they make and express something specific.
In addition to that, they are capable of smiling, something natural considering that they communicate through various gestures. It would seem that other animals also form a smile, but it is not as frequent and intentional as chimpanzees, so they resemble humans even more. The game has even been described between some specimens where they tickle each other and laugh.
Their group behavior can be quite friendly, they create friendships and love relationships with other members of their groups and stay together for a long time, knowing that the young stay with their mothers for a long time and even their whole lives. Even so, in the wild or in captivity they can be very aggressive when they feel that they are in danger or when they are hurt and annoyed, causing serious damage to their aggressors.
They are really affectionate, sociable and can remain calm for quite some time, which has made it easier for them to adapt to coexistence with human beings, with whom they share many things in common, as has been seen so far. In addition to everything mentioned, the way of walking also gives a great similarity, although most of the time they also rest their fists on the ground, as well as their hygienic habits, which show that they like to be clean and purge each other.
Their intelligence and ability to learn is really amazing, in addition to their ability to adapt and stability, they are able to "plan" a short-term future to act in a certain way. All this has made them a very interesting species for humans, in addition to sharing an evolutionary line. So they are the subject of many experiments and research studies around the world.
Food
The chimpanzee diet is not only based on wild fruits, nuts, roots, leaves or insects, they also feed on vertebrates and other primates that are smaller than them, both from other very different families and from close families, for example, galagos, other chimpanzees or red colobus. In this sense, their diet is not entirely vegetarian, but they are also carnivores, that is, they are omnivores.
They also tend to drink liquids when they feel that their body is weak, they will understand that they need to acquire nutrients not only from animals, insects and fruits, but also from water or the juice of some wild fruits. The way they drink is quite similar to that of humans, since they use their hands as bowls to ingest these liquids or use large leaves as a tool to create a glass and drink much more easily.
The intelligence of these animals can not only be demonstrated by seeing how they learn things that humans teach them in captivity, when they are observed hunting it can be seen that their way of capturing prey is not only based on the pursuit and capture, by cooperating with other chimpanzees they divide tasks, one individual can be in charge of waiting for the prey while another makes a chase and the third plans where to escape. It is a whole process that allows them to hunt more easily.
In addition to getting prey that allows them to feed, they can focus on the prey of other predators such as jaguars, which, although they exceed them in speed, do not do so in strength and size. Some chimpanzees have planned the capture of these prey as a warning method for the jaguars, establishing a level or hierarchy that allows them to stay protected and not become their prey at any time.
Reproduction
Among the characteristics of the chimpanzee that closely resemble homo sapiens is reproduction, chimpanzees get pregnant and can last up to eight months in that state before the females can have their young, so the gestation period of a chimpanzee It is quite similar to that of humans.
They give them a breast until they are approximately three years old, but they do not separate from their mothers, this is one of the characteristics of the chimpanzee that differentiates them from other species such as the White shark which tends to eat its weakest eggs and when its young have hatched, they eat them if they stay too close.
Threats
This species is threatened by various dangers, first of all human activity: the hunting of these animals to keep them as pets, to use them as an object of study or simply to eat them.
In addition to that, other animals have hunted them for their aggressive behavior that seeks to place them at a high level of hierarchy in their habitats, one of the characteristics of the chimpanzee, so that jaguars, leopards, crocodiles, snakes and other species of the forests are usually their great enemies.
Today there are several chimpanzees distributed throughout the world thanks to the effective measures that many organizations have taken to conserve this species, however, it is still on the list of Endangered animals in the world, its population is not as large as it was a few decades ago, the reduction has been drastic over time.