Chimpanzee facts and pictures

This endangered spices lives in Africa. They live in the savannas or in rain forest, were they spend equal time on the floor and on the trees but they mostly feed themselves and sleep on the trees. Their lifespan is around 50 years, only in captivity they can live longer than that. They are very social mammals so they live in groups called troops or communities. There are from 30 to 80 individual chimpanzees. In every group there is an Alpha male. The group is always controlled by him. An alpha male dose not have to be the strongest and the biggest chimpanzee, he just needs to be the best manipulating chimpanzee in group. A lot of time a female chimpanzee is the one who decides who will be a Alpha male. Hand gestures, vocalizations, and facial expressions are used for their communication. They can also learn to use American Sign Language. In captivity there is a chimpanzee called Washoe and he was taught to use more than 240 signs from this language. They also laugh when they play to each other. They also groom each other and it helps if a chimpanzee is in stress or nervous. Grooming calms them down. They also hug, touch hands, embrace, kiss and tickle each other.they can also express sorrow, depression , boredom, joy, anger, grief, pleasure and other feelings. They are nice animals but they are still not mentioned for to be pets. They can be really dangerous for a human because they are much stronger than we are and lets do not forget that they are still wild animals. In their behaviour we can also find some emphaty. If a mother chimpanzee dies her orphan little one can be adopted by its brothers or sisters. Sometimes also chimpanzees from other groups can adopt a baby chimpanzee. But a lot of time this orphans do not survive in the wildness.

When a female chimpanzee reaches 14 years she has a baby for the first time. They carry the baby for nine months like humans do. The baby's can not be independent for at least 5 or 6 years. Their survival depends of their mother. Mothers do not have a baby until the first one can take care of itself. In this 5 years they learn from their mothers. They teach them what to eat and what do they have to avoid. Mothers have baby's every 5 to 6 years which means they can have 4 to 6 baby's in their life. Females are very good mothers. They take care of them and carry them around all the time when they are smaller.they provide them with warmth, protection and nourishment. Even when the baby's grow up they still spend a lot of time with their mothers.

Their number in the wild is getting smaller and smaller. Their bigger predators are habitat destruction, hunting, and diseases. Because their DNA is alike to ours they can also catch some diseases from humans. This diseases can do no harm to a human but can kill a chimpanzee. They used to live in 25 countries and 50 years ago there were probably more than a million chimpanzees in Africa. But now they can be found in 21 African countries but are only 100 000 to 200 000 left in the wild. I hope their habitat destruction and hunting them for meat or for commercial intentions will stop because i thing a human hand did enough harm to this beautiful animals. And I hope that they could finally live peacefully then.