~Pan troglodytes~
By Dan Morad
AP Biology,
Mrs. Sidelsky
Endangered
Species
Project
Kingdom
Phylum
Animalia
Chordata
Class
Order
Family
Hominidae
Genus
Pan
Common Names
Chimpanzee, Common Chimpanzee,
Robust Chimpanzee, Chimpanzé,
Chimpancé
Scientific Name
(Species)
Pan troglodytes
Ancestors
Human, Gorilla, Orangutan, and Pygmy
chimpanzee or Bonobo
Mammalia
Primates
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
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.
A biome can be defined as a "major regional
community of plants and animals with similar life
forms and environmental conditions.
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.
Typical tropical
deciduous forest
biome.
Typical tropical
forest biome.
Typical tropical
savanna biome.
Typical tropical
grassland
biome.
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.
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)
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.
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.
Searching for food on
the termite mound.
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 semiterrestrial 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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