All About Chimps

In an effort to galvanise both wild and captive chimpanzee care and conservation communities, as well as engage our collective audiences and networks, we celebrate World Chimpanzee Day - July 14.

Chimpanzees have many physical characteristics in common with humans, and many that are uniquely their own.

Chimpanzee culture is much like human culture: groups in different areas share different cultures. Chimpanzees develop different cultural practices depending on their environment, and transmit their culture as learned behaviour.

Like humans, chimpanzees use a variety of verbal and non-verbal methods to communicate and are able to express a wide range of messages and emotions.

While most of a chimpanzee’s diet is made up of fruits, seeds, nuts, leaves, flowers and insects, they can be surprisingly creative with tool use and sourcing medicinal – and recreational – sources of food.

Chimpanzees and humans share a surprising number of similarities. For starters, chimpanzees and people share nearly identical genetic DNA. More recently, another similarity has been discovered: the presence of culture in chimpanzees.

Chimps are more closely related to humans than they are to gorillas. But the similarities we share go beyond our genetic makeup.