The Life of Chimpanzees

Chimpanzees or Pan Troglodytes are mammal primates who inhabit the tropical forests of Central Africa, from Gambia in the west to Uganda in the east, excluding the region bordered by the Congo and Lualaba rivers where their sister species, bonobos or Pan paniscus can be found. Made up of three recognized subspecies, including Pan troglodytes verus in the west, from Gambia to the Niger river, Pan troglodytes troglodytes in the central range, from the Niger river to the Congo and Pan troglodytes schweinfurthi in the far eastern portion of the range, from the northwestern corner of Zaire into Western Uganda and Tanzania.

Medium Sized

With a standing height of three to five-and-a-half feet tall at adulthood, males Chimps weight between 75 to 154 pounds, with sexually dimorphic females weighing in at 57 to 110 pounds, while chimps in captivity have been known to reach weights of 176 pounds for males and 150 pounds for females. Exceeding one and a half times their height when fully spread from side to side, Chimpanzees possess long arms, as well as long hands and fingers, save for their short thumbs, which allows chimps to swing from tree limb to tree limb using their hands as hooks while climbing or swinging in a form of locomotion known as brachiation.

Omnivore Diet

Chimps are omnivores who eat a wide variety of plants and animals, including fruits, nuts, leaves and flowers, insects, small antelope and red colobus monkeys. While early understanding of chimpanzee sexual mating habits was fraught with misconceptions, today we know that chimps are polygynandrous, where males and females mate with multiple partners, although some dominant males have been known to prevent sexual access to a given female either through force or taking the female on a solitary courtship. Females, in turn, have an estrus cycle of approximately 36 days, reaching a state of maximal tumescence for an average 6.5 days.

Long Childhood

Gestating their young for a mean 7.5 months, female chimps typically give birth to a single baby, although twins are more prevalent in chimpanzees than humans. Females carry their young either ventrally or on their backs until weaning at 3.5 to 4.5 years, young chimps are fully mature by seven to ten years, with a lifespan of 38 to 40 years in the wild, while Little Mama was the oldest chimp to ever live in captivity, passing away in 2017 at 78 years of age, making the life of chimpanzees, a human-like primate of the animal world.