By Dan Morad

AP Biology, Mrs. Sidelsky

Endangered Species Project

~Pan troglodytes~

Kingdom Animalia

Phylum Chordata

Class Mammalia

Order Primates

Family Hominidae

Genus Pan

Common NamesChimpanzee, Common Chimpanzee, Robust

Chimpanzee, Chimpanzé, Chimpancé

Scientific Name (Species)

Pan troglodytes

AncestorsHuman, Gorilla,

Orangutan, and Pygmy chimpanzee or Bonobo

Chimpanzee Distribution

Chimpanzee’s dwell in West and Central Africa, North of river Zaire, from Senegal to Tanzania. They occupy rainforests, grasslands, and savannahs. The chimpanzee sleeps and eats in the canopy layer of the rainforest and can live up to 3048 meters above the ground. Everyday the chimps are building themselves new nests to stay in. These nests are made up of sticks, leaves, dirt, grass, and man other things found in and around the rainforest. Chimpanzees seldom wanders from the trees and tries to avoid sunlight as much as possible.

Inhabits 21 African countries: Angola, Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Congo, The Democratic Republic of the Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Sudan, United Republic of Tanzania, Togo, and Uganda

A biome can be defined as a "major regional community of plants and animals with similar life forms and environmental conditions.

Typical tropical forest biome.

Typical tropical savanna biome.

Typical tropical deciduous forest biome. Typical tropical

grassland biome.

The Chimpanzee is found in terrestrial biomes. These terrestrial biomes include tropical rainforests, tropical savannas, tropical deciduous forests, and tropical grasslands. Topical forest biomes have both a high temperature and rainfall. They usually are moist tropical lowlands found within 23.5° latitude of the equator. The soils are highly weathered and usually red in color due to the high Iron and Aluminum count. Tropical savanna biomes are areas in dry tropics that consists of scattered individual trees and grass. These biomes are usually found on the outskirts of rainforests. This biome consists of three seasons: cool and dry, hot and dry, and warm and wet. The soils of savanna biomes are low in nutrients. Tropical deciduous forest biomes consist of mainly deciduous, leaf bearing, trees. The fallen leaves provide fertile soil in this biome causing a diversity of plant life. Around the world most of these forests have been logged and only few spots remain today. Lastly, the tropical grasslands biome is mainly grassland and is occupied almost no shrubs and trees. The soil of the grassland biome is the deepest and most fertile in the world.

Chimpanzees Height Weight

Female 2-3.5 ft (0.66 -1 m) 57 -110 pounds (26 - 50 kg)

Male 3-4 ft (0.9-1.2 m) 90 - 115 pounds (35 - 70 kg)

The chimpanzee is a fairly large animal. The male chimp is about three to four feet tall and weighs about 90 to 115 pounds. The female chimp is about two to three and a half feet tall and weighs about 57 to 110 pounds. Its skull is 19.6 centimeters large. The color of its coat can be light brown, black, or a grayish color. Both sexes are prone to partial baldness early in maturity. The color of its face is usually black. Baby chimpanzees have very pale skin in the areas that have no hair and a white tuft of hair on the rump. The chimpanzee has arms that reach past its knees. The chimp has feet that act like hands. The chimp has 22 teeth when it is about two to eight years old. The adult chimp has 32 teeth. The chimpanzee does not have a tail because it is an ape. It has beautifully shaped ears and a rather squashed nose. The chimpanzee makes many facial expressions similar to ours.

Adaptations of the chimpanzee include having a long fingers and an opposable thumb to allow for both gross and fine manipulation of objects. The big toe is also opposable for grasping different things. The chimpanzee has a hairless face providing them with the ability to show different facial expressions. These expressions are usually combined with vocalizations to communicate a variety of messages. The chimpanzee can communicate through vocal, visual and tactile communication. Like a human, the chimpanzee has a high degree of intelligence. It can solve more problems then any animal, except a human. This problems usually associate with food gathering. The chimpanzee uses a vast number of tools. Chimps will make a reed tool that extracts insects from their mounds. They also use rocks to smash the outer layers of hard fruits. Lastly, chimps use different objects to hurl and catch different prey.

                     

   

Searching for food on the termite mound.

The chimpanzee has a fairly large diet. Chimps are omnivores (eating both plants and meat). It usually eats whatever it eats its eyes on. It eats many fruits, such as bananas, apples, berries, and many more. The chimpanzee gathers these fruits by climbing trees and picking them or knocking them off the branch by throwing a stick or stone at it. The chimpanzee also eats many types of meat, suck as smaller monkeys, pigs, antelope, and duikers. The chimp catches these animals by throwing sticks and rocks at them or the chimp hoots, screams, and slaps logs to attract its prey. The chimpanzees will also eat insects such as, soldier ants, weaver ants, and termites. It fishes for termites and catches the ants by licking them off the forest floor. Other things the chimp eats are leaves, buds, blossoms, bark, raisins, honey, and insect eggs. It also drinks water from streams and rivers, often by using a chewed leaf as a sponge to sop up the water. The chimpanzee usually eats late afternoon or early morning.

Chimpanzees are social animals that are active during the day. Chimps are very social animals and use many different ways to communicate with other members of their group, such as facial expressions, vocalizations, body language, grooming, and kisses and pats. They usually travel in small groups of about 40-60 chimps. Chimps are well known for "knuckle-walking," which is their main method of travel. The chimpanzee has a very open personality. The chimp uses gestures to indicate needs and emotions. It does many things that humans do like laughing and it loving. The chimp is also playful, silly, and very intelligent too. When a mother chimpanzee tickles her young, it laughs just like a human. The chimpanzee can live to be 40 to 50 years of age. It has 24 different sounds to communicate with each other and the hooting of a chimpanzee can be herd up to two miles away. Tools are also very important to the chimpanzee because it helps them protect themselves from enemies and to reach foods high in the tree. The chimpanzee also uses medicinal plants to treat wounds and without plants the chimpanzee would probably not survive.

AND

The chimpanzee reacts in a fierce way towards its environment. Within a chimp’s group or community it is exceedingly calm and gentle. However, when faced with chimps from other territories, chimps become vicious and ferocious. Chimps help insure a healthy plant diversity within their habitat because they feed on a variety of fruits and help disperse their seeds. The common chimpanzee is a frugivorous species, but will also consume seeds, nuts, flowers, leaves, pith, honey, insects, eggs, and vertebrates, including monkeys. During the dry season when fruit becomes scare seeds as well as bark, flowers, resin, pith, and galls are important food resources. The common chimpanzee will use 300 different plant species per year, and about 20 different plant species per day. Biochemical studies have shown that chimps and humans share all but 2% of their genes. Because chimps so closely resemble humans, studying their behavior and biology provides great insights into our own ancestry and social/biological development. The common chimpanzee is a diurnal and a semi-terrestrial species. Every night every common chimpanzee, except for the infants, will construct a nest made of branches and leaves up in a tree.

Puberty in both sexes occurs at about seven years of age. The female chimpanzee has a 35 day menstrual cycle and can breed during any time of the year. There is no regular breeding season, but females only mate during heat, which lasts two to three weeks or more and occurs every four to six weeks. The chimpanzee reaches sexual maturity at ages eight to ten. The chimpanzee weighs about nine kilograms when first born. It is extremely rare or a chimpanzee to have twins. I usually has one baby every five years. The infant chimpanzee is born with a pale-pinkish colored face. A chimpanzee’s gestation period is about 230 - 240 days. Almost all female chimpanzees have a baby at some time in their life.

Female chimpanzees carefully nurture their young. The baby chimp is very interesting. For the first five months of a baby chimpanzee’s life; it goes everywhere with its parents due to the fact that it possesses only a weak grasping reflex. The baby chimpanzee will grasp to its mothers' chest and hold on while traveling to keep up with the pace for the first five to seven months of its life. At the age of four the baby chimp is able to walk and starts to meet other chimps. It spends most of its life with other chimps its age. The chimpanzee leaves its mother at ages eight to ten when it reaches sexual maturity. The adult chimpanzees lets the infants hang on tree branches so they becomes stronger and are kept occupied.

The chimpanzee population has been reduced to between 100,000 and 200,000 chimps in 21 different nations. Of these 21 nations only three of them have a population of more then 10,000 chimpanzees. These three countries are Zaire, Gabon, and Cote d’ Ivoire. Trading, poaching, and disease are the largest cause of endangerment. The chimpanzee is endangered also because humans and big cats, such as leopards, hunt it. It is also caught and used for testing since it is the closest related mammal to humans. The chimpanzee is threatened by loss of habitat because the trees where the chimps live are being logged away. Logging on the Ivory Coast and in central Zaire has caused a great amount of habitat destruction for the chimpanzees. In addition, when the trees are cut down, food gets scarce. Some other reasons for endangerment are disasters such as extreme heat or cold weather and diseases that are traveling throughout the forest where the chimp lives. Without humans and big cats, the chimpanzee would have a better chance of surviving because these are the chimpanzee’s main enemies in the wild.

Zoologists and other people are trying very hard to save the chimpanzee in many ways. They are trying to keep the chimpanzees safe from the outside world. They are trying to accomplish this by putting chimps in zoos, captivity, and other places. Years ago, the Philadelphia Zoo had a fire that killed the whole primate section, including the chimpanzees. The Philadelphia Zoo has been rebuilding a new primate section since the disaster. Laws in many places protect the chimpanzee. The following places protect the chimpanzee by law: Red List of Endangered Species, Kibira National Park, Nyungwe Forest Reserve, Viruga National Park, and many other places. Gombe National Park in Tanzania, Africa, has become a wildlife preserve for many chimpanzees. The Republic of Congo has undertaken a program to conserve wild lands in order to prevent tourism, and it also protects the chimpanzee by law. The chimpanzee was listed threatened on October 19, 1976 and was listed as endangered on March 12, 1990. Zoologists around the world hope to soon be able to take chimpanzees off the endangered species list.

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