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Chimpanzee
These gentle creatures have captured our hearts and imaginations. So many of them have been captured in film that we have come to take them for granted. From Tarzan's Cheeta, to Reagan's Bonzo their comic antics have made us smile. Perhaps because they are almost like characatures of humans we have found a special place in our hearts for them.
The problem is that like so many other creatures on this earth we have taken their habitat away from them and driven them to the brink of extinction. When you look within their eyes and see their gentle souls we are reminded of our own humanity. To lose them and we lose a part of ourselves.
Great apes -- gorillas, chimpanzees, and bonobos -- are being hunted to extinction for commercial bushmeat in the equatorial forests of west and central Africa. A ragged farflung army of 2,000 bushmeat hunters supported by the timber industry infrastructure will illegally shoot and butcher over 3,000 gorillas and 4,000 chimpanzees this year. That's five times the number of gorillas on Rwanda's Mt. Visoke and 20 times more chimpanzees than live near Tanzania's Gombe Stream. People pay a premium to eat more great apes each year than are now kept in all the zoos and laboratories of the world.
The chimpanzee lives in the rain forest and savannah of equatorial Africa. Chimpanzees are typically 1 to 1.7 m tall and weigh 40 to 50 kg. They have light-coloured, black, or blotchy skin, and large protruding ears.
Partly because of their intelligence, these animals have been used extensively for scientific research. In 1961, the chimp Ham orbited the earth in a rocket, preceding human astronauts. The demand for live chimpanzees for zoos and research has led to a significant decline in their population.
Chimpanzees eat plants, ants, termites, and occasionally meat. They live and travel in small groups, communicating and expressing their moods with a variety of hoots, grunts, roars, and screams. They apparently delight in their own sounds. Chimpanzees have also demonstrated the ability to use and make tools, share and cooperate for the common good, express complex emotions and communicate using sign language
