Social hierarchies exist for both male and female chimpanzees.

Chimps live in a fission-fusion society, meaning they don’t stay together all the time, but form temporary associations with a subset of the group. Now we know that chimps, some birds, and even some fish can make and use tools.Ĭhimpanzees are social, living in communities of up to 150 individuals. Before Jane Goodall’s pioneering studies revealing tool use in chimpanzees, humans believed that toolmaking and use was what made us distinct from other animal species. Sick chimps have also been known to eat potentially medicinal plants. They are also known to make and use tools, including stick tools for the extraction of ants, termites, honey and bees stone and wood tools to crack nuts fishing rods created from long branches to fish for algae and sponges made from leaves. Some even argue that they should be taxonomically categorised as Homo, the same genus as humans.Ĭhimpanzees are highly intelligent, with complex social structures and distinct cultures. There are four recognised sub-species of chimpanzee: the western chimpanzee found in West Africa, the Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzee found only in Nigeria and Cameroon, the central chimpanzee found in Cameroon and Congo Basin, and the eastern chimpanzee found in Burundi, Central African Republic, Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda.Ĭhimpanzees share about 99% of our DNA, making them the closest living relative of humans.

Prey crack status