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Keywords: animal-in-title, one-word-title
Chimpanzee, sometimes colloquially chimp, is the common name for the two extant species of ape in the genus Pan. The Congo River forms the boundary between the native habitat of the two species:
Chimpanzees are members of the Hominidae family, along with gorillas, humans, and orangutans. Chimpanzees split from the human branch of the family about 4 to 6 million years ago. The two chimpanzee species are the closest living relatives to humans, all being members of the Hominini tribe (along with extinct species of Hominina subtribe). Chimpanzees are the only known members of the Panina subtribe. The two Pan species split only about one million years ago.
Chimpanzee testicles are unusually large for their body size, with a combined weight of about compared to a gorilla's or a human's . This is generally attributed to sperm competition due to the polyandrous nature of chimpanzee mating behavior. Chimpanzees reach puberty at an age of between 8 and 10 years, and rarely live past age 40 in the wild, but have been known to live more than 60 years in captivity.
Female chimpanzees also have a hierarchy which is influenced by the position of a female individual within a group. In some chimpanzee communities, the young females may inherit high status from a high-ranking mother. The females will also form allies to dominate lower-ranking females. In contrast to males who have a main purpose of acquiring dominant status for access to mating privileges and sometimes violent domination of subordinates, females acquire dominant status for access to resources such as food. High-ranking females will often get first access to resources. In general, both genders acquire dominant status to improve social standing within a group.
Its often the females who choose the alpha male. For a male chimpanzee to win the alpha status, he must gain acceptance from the females in the community. Females have to make sure that their group is going to places that supply them with enough food. In some cases, a group of dominant females will oust an alpha male who is not to their preference and rather back up the other male who they see potential of leading the group as a successful alpha male.
Evidence for "chimpanzee spirituality" includes display of mourning, "incipient romantic love", "rain dance", appreciation of natural beauty such as a sunset over a lake, curiosity and respect towards wildlife (such as the python, which is neither a threat nor a food source to chimpanzees), empathy toward other species (such as feeding turtles) and even "animism" or "pretend play" in chimps cradling and grooming rocks or sticks.
There is ongoing debate among some scientists, notably Noam Chomsky and David Premack, about non-human great apes' ability to learn language. Since the early reports on Washoe, numerous other studies have been conducted with varying levels of success, including one involving a chimpanzee named, in parody, Nim Chimpsky, trained by Herbert Terrace of Columbia University. Although his initial reports were quite positive, in November 1979, Terrace and his team re-evaluated the videotapes of Nim with his trainers, analyzing them frame by frame for signs as well as for exact context (what was happening both before and after Nim’s signs). In the re-analysis, Terrace concluded that Nim’s utterances could be explained merely as prompting on the part of the experimenters, as well as mistakes in reporting the data. “Much of the apes’ behavior is pure drill,” he said. “Language still stands as an important definition of the human species.” In this reversal, Terrace now argued that Nim’s use of ASL was not like human language acquisition. Nim never initiated conversations himself, rarely introduced new words, and simply imitated what the humans did. Nim’s sentences also did not grow in length, unlike human children whose vocabulary and sentence length show a strong positive correlation.
Chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans show laughterlike vocalizations in response to physical contact, such as wrestling, play chasing, or tickling. This is documented in wild and captive chimpanzees. Common Chimpanzee laughter is not readily recognizable to humans as such, because it is generated by alternating inhalations and exhalations that sound more like breathing and panting. There are instances in which non-human primates have been reported to have expressed joy. One study analyzed and recorded sounds made by human babies and Bonobos when tickled. It found that although the Bonobo's laugh was a higher frequency, the laugh followed a pattern similar to that of human babies and included similar facial expressions. Humans and chimpanzees share similar ticklish areas of the body, such as the armpits and belly. The enjoyment of tickling in chimpanzees does not diminish with age.
Adult Common Chimpanzees, particularly males, can be very aggressive. They are highly territorial and are known to kill other chimps. Chimpanzees also engage in targeted hunting of lower order primates such as the red colobus and bush babies, and use the meat from these kills as a "social tool" within their community. In February 2009, after an incident in which a pet chimp named Travis attacked and mutilated a woman in Stamford, Connecticut, the U.S. House of Representatives approved a primate pet ban in the United States.
The first use of the name "chimpanzee", however, did not occur until 1738. The name is derived from a Tshiluba language term "kivili-chimpenze", which is the local name for the animal and translates loosely as "mockman" or possibly just "ape". The colloquialism "chimp" was most likely coined some time in the late 1870s. Biologists applied Pan as the genus name of the animal. Chimps as well as other apes had also been purported to have been known to Western writers in ancient times, but mainly as myths and legends on the edge of European and Arab societal consciousness, mainly through fragmented and sketchy accounts of European adventurers. Apes are mentioned variously by Aristotle, as well as the English Bible, where they are described as having been collected by Solomon. (1 Kings 10:22. However the Hebrew word, qőf, may mean a monkey.) Apes are mentioned in the Qur'an (7:166), where God tells Israelites who transgressed Shabbat "Be ye apes".
The first of these early transcontinental chimpanzees came from Angola and were presented as a gift to Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange in 1640, and were followed by a few of its brethren over the next several years. Scientists described these first chimpanzees as "pygmies", and noted the animals' distinct similarities to humans. The next two decades would see a number of the creatures imported into Europe, mainly acquired by various zoological gardens as entertainment for visitors.
Darwin's theory of natural selection (published in 1859) spurred scientific interest in chimpanzees, as in much of life science, leading eventually to numerous studies of the animals in the wild and captivity. The observers of chimpanzees at the time were mainly interested in behaviour as it related to that of humans. This was less strictly and disinterestedly scientific than it might sound, with much attention being focused on whether or not the animals had traits that could be considered 'good'; the intelligence of chimpanzees was often significantly exaggerated, as immortalized in Hugo Rheinhold's Affe mit Schädel (see image, left). By the end of the 19th century chimpanzees remained very much a mystery to humans, with very little factual scientific information available.
The 20th century saw a new age of scientific research into chimpanzee behaviour. Before 1960, almost nothing was known about chimpanzee behaviour in their natural habitat. In July of that year, Jane Goodall set out to Tanzania's Gombe forest to live among the chimpanzees, where she primarily studied the members of the Kasakela chimpanzee community. Her discovery that chimpanzees made and used tools was groundbreaking, as humans were previously believed to be the only species to do so. The most progressive early studies on chimpanzees were spearheaded primarily by Wolfgang Köhler and Robert Yerkes, both of whom were renowned psychologists. Both men and their colleagues established laboratory studies of chimpanzees focused specifically on learning about the intellectual abilities of chimpanzees, particularly problem-solving. This typically involved basic, practical tests on laboratory chimpanzees, which required a fairly high intellectual capacity (such as how to solve the problem of acquiring an out-of-reach banana). Notably, Yerkes also made extensive observations of chimpanzees in the wild which added tremendously to the scientific understanding of chimpanzees and their behaviour. Yerkes studied chimpanzees until World War II, while Köhler concluded five years of study and published his famous Mentality of Apes in 1925 (which is coincidentally when Yerkes began his analyses), eventually concluding that "chimpanzees manifest intelligent behaviour of the general kind familiar in human beings ... a type of behaviour which counts as specifically human" (1925). The August 2008 issue of the American Journal of Primatology reported results of a year-long study of chimpanzees in Tanzania’s Mahale Mountains National Park which produced evidence that chimpanzees are becoming sick from viral infectious diseases they have likely contracted from humans. Molecular, microscopic and epidemiological investigations demonstrated that the chimpanzees living at Mahale Mountains National Park have been suffering from a respiratory disease that is likely caused by a variant of a human paramyxovirus.
Chimpanzees used in biomedical research tend to be used repeatedly over decades, rather than used and killed as with most laboratory animals. Some individual chimps currently in U.S. laboratories have been used in experiments for over 40 years. According to Project R&R;, a campaign to release chimps held in U.S. labs—run by the New England Anti-Vivisection Society in conjunction with Jane Goodall and other primate researchers—the oldest known chimp in a U.S. lab is Wenka, who was born in a laboratory in Florida on May 21, 1954. She was removed from her mother on the day of birth to be used in a vision experiment that lasted 17 months, then sold as a pet to a family in North Carolina. She was returned to the Yerkes National Primate Research Center in 1957 when she became too big to handle. Since then, she has given birth six times, and has been used in research into alcohol use, oral contraceptives, ageing, and cognitive studies.
With the publication of the chimpanzee genome, there are reportedly plans to increase the use of chimps in labs, with some scientists arguing that the federal moratorium on breeding chimps for research should be lifted. A five-year moratorium was imposed by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 1996, because too many chimps had been bred for HIV research, and it has been extended annually since 2001.
Other researchers argue that chimps are unique animals and either should not be used in research, or should be treated differently. Pascal Gagneux, an evolutionary biologist and primate expert at the University of California, San Diego, argues that, given chimpanzees' sense of self, tool use, and genetic similarity to human beings, studies using chimps should follow the ethical guidelines that are used for human subjects unable to give consent. Also, a recent study suggests that chimpanzees which are retired from labs exhibit a form of posttraumatic stress disorder. Stuart Zola, director of the Yerkes National Primate Research Laboratory, disagrees. He told National Geographic: "I don't think we should make a distinction between our obligation to treat humanely any species, whether it's a rat or a monkey or a chimpanzee. No matter how much we may wish it, chimps are not human."
An increasing number of governments are enacting a Great Ape research ban forbidding the use of chimpanzees and other great apes in research or toxicology testing. As of 2006, Austria, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the UK had introduced such bans.
In the age of television, a new genre of chimp act emerged in the United States: series whose cast consisted entirely of chimpanzees dressed as humans and "speaking" lines dubbed by human actors. These shows, examples of which include Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp in the 1970s or The Chimp Channel in the 1990s, relied on the novelty of their ape cast to make their timeworn, low comedy gags funny. Their chimpanzee "actors" were as interchangeable as the apes in a circus act, being amusing as chimpanzees and not as individuals. Animal rights group, PETA, has urged advertisers against the use of chimpanzees in television and commercials, citing animal abuse. In a recent success, they convinced Chrysler Corporation to change a commercial in which a chimpanzee presses a lever to blow something up into showing an "invisible monkey" (ironically the commercial was a parody of car dealerships that have a monkey blow something up to begin a sales promotion).
When chimpanzees appear in other TV shows, they generally do so as comic relief sidekicks to humans. In that role, for instance, J. Fred Muggs appeared with Today Show host Dave Garroway in the 1950s, Judy on Daktari in the 1960s or Darwin on The Wild Thornberrys in the 1990s. In contrast to the fictional depictions of other animals, such as dogs (as in Lassie), dolphins (Flipper), horses (The Black Stallion) or even other great apes (King Kong), chimpanzee characters and actions are rarely relevant to the plot.
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Category:Apes Category:Mammals of Africa
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