Chimpanzee
Pan troglodytes
— Where the name comes from
Chimpanzee comes from a Bantu language of the Congo basin, where a form akin to kivili-chimpenze named the animal “mock man”. The genus Pan is the god of the woods; troglodytes, “cave dweller”, is a mistake: chimpanzees do not live in caves.
— Facts
- Group
- Mammals · Mammalia
- Order
- Primates
- Habitat
- Rainforest, gallery forest, wooded savannah
- Range
- Equatorial Africa, from Senegal to Tanzania
- Size
- 65–95 cm seated, 30–60 kg
- Diet
- Omnivore — fruit, leaves, insects, and occasional hunting
- Lifespan
- 40 years in the wild
— Characteristics
- 01
Shares roughly 98.8% of its DNA with us.
- 02
Makes and modifies tools: sticks for termites, stones as anvils.
- 03
Communities have different technical traditions, passed on by learning.
— What sets it apart
Different chimpanzee communities use different tools for the same job, and those differences are explained neither by the environment nor by genetics: they are explained by who learnt from whom. That is the working definition of culture. Groups separated by a river, with the same food available, reach it in different ways — and teach their own way to their young.
