Chimpanzee

Distribution

Species range provided by WWF's Wildfinder.

Habitats

The following habitats are found across the Chimpanzee distribution range. Find out more about these environments, what it takes to live there and what else inhabits them.

Behaviours

Discover what these behaviours are and how different plants and animals use them.

• Learning
• Culture
• Language
• Predation defence
• Tree dweller
• Adapted to climbing
• Hierarchical
• Tactile sense
• Acoustic communication
• Maternal care
• Pack-hunter
• Polygynandrous
• Polygynous
• Social
• Adapted to running
• Seed dispersal
• Chemical communication
• Sexual dimorphism
• Territorial
• Tool use
• Visual communication
• Viviparous
• Co-operative breeding

The common chimpanzee up close

Of the two chimpanzee species, common chimpanzees are the more aggressive and are the only animals other than humans known to wage war on members of their own species.

Diet

A chimpanzee troop's territory is largely defined by the position of fruiting trees, as ripe fruits make up over half of a chimp's diet. The rest of their diet is made up of other plant matter and insects. They also hunt larger animals such as colobus monkeys, although the amount of hunting varies greatly from one troop to another. Chimpanzees have been observed to use medicinal plants and minerals to treat various illnesses.

Habitat

Common chimpanzees are found in the dense forests of central Africa. Although there were probably millions of chimpanzees alive 60 years ago, the rapid destruction of their forest habitat has reduced the population to around 200,000.

Social behaviour

Common chimpanzees are very social animals, with males forming the closest bonds. Males stay in their mothers' troop all their lives and build up strong relationships with other males from the group.

This results in the formation of dominance hierarchies in which dominant males attempt to stop others from having access to females. Females, though, are less social than males. They usually only form strong bonds with their infants and leave the maternal troop to join a neighbouring group when they reach adolescence. This is completely different from their close relatives, bonobos.

Communication is vital in maintaining harmonious chimpanzee society and violence is avoided wherever possible. They are able to convey their feelings to one another using a combination of sounds, body language and facial expressions. Effective communication also enables chimpanzees to co-ordinate group events such as hunting and wars on neighbouring chimp troops.

Interesting feature

Before the discovery of tool-making chimps in the 1970s, it was thought that only humans had the capacity to make and use tools. Since then, several other animals have been found to have variations on this skill.