The chimpanzee, also known as the common chimpanzee, robust chimpanzee, or simply "chimp", is a species of great ape native to the forests and savannahs of tropical Africa. It has four confirmed subspecies and a fifth proposed subspecies. The chimpanzee and the closely related bonobo are classified in the genus Pan. Evidence from fossils and DNA sequencing shows that Pan is a sister taxon to the human lineage and is humans' closest living relative.
The bonobo, also historically called the pygmy chimpanzee and less often, the dwarf or gracile chimpanzee, is an endangered great ape and one of the two species making up the genus Pan; the other being the common chimpanzee. Although bonobos are not a subspecies of chimpanzee, but rather a distinct species in their own right, both species are sometimes referred to collectively using the generalized term chimpanzees, or chimps. Taxonomically, the members of the chimpanzee/bonobo subtribe Panina are collectively termed panins.
The genus Pan consists of two extant species: the common chimpanzee and the bonobo. Taxonomically, these two ape species are collectively termed panins; however, both species are more commonly referred to collectively using the generalized term chimpanzees, or chimps. Together with humans, gorillas, and orangutans they are part of the family Hominidae. Native to sub-Saharan Africa, common chimpanzees and bonobos are currently both found in the Congo jungle, while only the common chimpanzee is also found further north in West Africa. Both species are listed as endangered on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, and in 2017 the Convention on Migratory Species selected the common chimpanzee for special protection.
Apes (Hominoidea) are a branch of Old World tailless simians native to Africa and Southeast Asia. They are the sister group of the Old World monkeys, together forming the catarrhine clade. They are distinguished from other primates by a wider degree of freedom of motion at the shoulder joint as evolved by the influence of brachiation. In traditional and non-scientific use, the term "ape" excludes humans, and is thus not equivalent to the scientific taxon Hominoidea. There are two extant branches of the superfamily Hominoidea: the gibbons, or lesser apes; and the hominids, or great apes.
Washoe was a female common chimpanzee who was the first non-human to learn to communicate using American Sign Language as part of a research experiment on animal language acquisition.
Research into great ape language has involved teaching chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and orangutans to communicate with humans and with each other using sign language, physical tokens, lexigrams (Yerkish), and mimicking human speech. Some primatologists argue that these primates' use of the communication tools indicates their ability to use "language", although this is not consistent with some definitions of that term.
The Bili apes or Bondo mystery apes are large chimpanzees that inhabit Bili Forest in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Richard Walter Wrangham is a British primatologist. His research and writing have involved ape behavior, human evolution, violence, and cooking.
Craig Stanford is Professor of Biological Sciences and Anthropology at the University of Southern California. He is also a Research Associate in the herpetology section of the Los Angeles County Natural History Museum. He is known for his field studies of the behavior, ecology and conservation biology of chimpanzees, mountain gorillas and other tropical animals, and has published more than 140 scientific papers and 17 books on animal behavior, human evolution and wildlife conservation. He is best known for his field study of the predator–prey ecology of chimpanzees and the animals they hunt in Gombe National Park, Tanzania, and for his long term study of the behavior and ecology of chimpanzees and mountain gorillas in Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, Uganda.
Junichiro Itani is considered a founder of the discipline of Japanese primatology. He was an internationally renowned anthropologist and served as a professor emeritus at Kyoto University. He died at age 75 of pneumonia. As with most Japanese primatologists, his early research was on Japanese monkeys, but most of his career focused on African primates, especially chimpanzees.
Experiments involving non-human primates (NHPs) include toxicity testing for medical and non-medical substances; studies of infectious disease, such as HIV and hepatitis; neurological studies; behavior and cognition; reproduction; genetics; and xenotransplantation. Around 65,000 NHPs are used every year in the United States, and around 7,000 across the European Union. Most are purpose-bred, while some are caught in the wild.
Anne C. Zeller is a physical anthropologist who specializes in the study of primates. She received her M.A.(1971) and Ph.D (1978) from the University of Toronto.
The eastern chimpanzee is a subspecies of the common chimpanzee. It occurs in the Central African Republic, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, and Tanzania.
Tool use by animals is a phenomenon in which an animal uses any kind of tool in order to achieve a goal such as acquiring food and water, grooming, defense, recreation or construction. Originally thought to be a skill possessed only by humans, some tool use requires a sophisticated level of cognition. There is considerable discussion about the definition of what constitutes a tool and therefore which behaviours can be considered true examples of tool use. A wide range of animals, including mammals, birds, fish, cephalopods, and insects, are considered to use tools.
The Hominidae, whose members are known as great apes or hominids, are a taxonomic family of primates that includes eight extant species in four genera: Pongo, the Bornean, Sumatran and Tapanuli orangutan; Gorilla, the eastern and western gorilla; Pan, the common chimpanzee and the bonobo; and Homo, of whom only modern humans remain, with several extinct relatives and ancestors, such as Homo erectus.
Primate cognition is the study of the intellectual and behavioral skills of non-human primates, particularly in the fields of psychology, behavioral biology, primatology, and anthropology.
The western chimpanzee, or West African chimpanzee, is a subspecies of the common chimpanzee. It inhabits western Africa, mainly in Côte d'Ivoire and Guinea but with populations in surrounding countries.
Carole Cooney Noon, born Carole Jane Cooney, was an American anthropologist and primatologist best known for founding Save the Chimps, a Florida non-profit chimpanzee sanctuary that is the largest such sanctuary in the world as of 2009.
Josep Call is a Spanish comparative psychologist specializing in primate cognition.
Nadezhda Nikolaevna Ladygina-Kohts was a Russian zoopsychologist and comparative psychologist best known for her work comparing human and chimpanzee behavior, emotion, and cognition. She is the author of several books on ape and monkey behavior and served as the co-director of the first natural history museum in Russia.
