The chimpanzee as the Closest Human Relative - Essay Example

Chimpanzee Chimpanzees are human’s closest living relatives, sharing approximatelythan 98 percent of human genetic structure. Humans and chimpanzee are believed to share a similar forefather who lived some four to eight million years ago. In addition, Chimpanzees live in social groups of numerous dozen chimpanzees and can divide themselves to African woodlands, rainforests and grasslands. Chimpanzees are family members of the Hominidae, together with gorillas, orangutans and humans. Chimpanzees differed from the human family group long time ago. They are seen to be the nearest living relatives of human beings. Human beings are members of the tribe Hominina together with vanishing species of sub-tribe Hominina. Also, Chimpanzees are the only recognized members of the sub-species Panina. The two species of Panina divided about one million years ago. Keywords: Hominidae, Hominina and Panina Chimpanzee Chimpanzees display very minimal morphological variances between subspecies. They have a more robust body than bonobos Pan paniscus. Additionally, they are faintly sexually dimorphic. On average, females weigh averagely from 32 to 47 kg (70.5 to 104 lb) while males weigh averagely from 40 to 60 kg (88.2 to 132 lb) (Rowe 1996). Both females and males have a typical height of 816 mm (2.68 ft) (Rowe 1996). The chimpanzee taxonomy hierarchy is as follows; Suborder: Haplorrhini Infraorder: Simiiformes Superfamily: Hominoidea Family: Hominidae Genus: Pan Species: P. troglodytes Subspecies: P. t. schweinfurthii, P. t. troglodytes, P. t. vellerosus, P. t. verus. This essay discusses on the taxonomy of chimpanzee family and their biography. All Chimpanzees are black in color, but have pale faces and a white tail tuft, which later darkens with age. Chimpanzees are seen to have bulkier thick bodies with long arms that lengthen past their knees (Rowe 1996). They also have short legs, large thumbs and no tails. A large portion of their body is protected with long black hair except their faces, ears, fingers, and toes which have skin alone. These living creatures have protruding ears for both males and females, which entails white beards (Rowe 1996). Their movement array encompasses quadruped knuckle walking and irregular bipedalism. Chimpanzees are both land-dwelling and arboreal, with the quantity of time spent on the ground wavering among different case study sites and between sexes. Moreover, Chimpanzees create their sleeping nests in trees when darkness falls (Rowe 1996). A normal life span of chimpanzees is 40 to 45 years. All the same, the life span for captive chimpanzees is substantially longer. Diet Even though a chimpanzee typically walks on all fours (quadruped-knuckle), a chimpanzee can stand and walk upright like human beings. Chimpanzees swing from one branch to the other. They can also move systematically from one tree to another where they do most of their eating (Goodall 1986). Chimpanzees normally sleep in the trees, using leaves and branches to build nests. Generally, chimpanzees are extremely specialized frugivores (fruit and plant) eaters, but they also ingest meat, eggs and insects including carrion (Goodall 1986). They have an extremely diverse diet that encompasses hundreds of known foods. Chimpanzees walk in troops in search of food and other basic things such as shelter and safety. A chimpanzee troops region is mainly demarcated by the location of fruiting trees, as ready fruits make up over half of a chimpanzees diet (Goodall 1986). The rest of their diet is made up of other plant matter and insects. Monkeys such as the Colubus monkey hunt larger animals, though the amount of hunting differs significantly from one troop to another. Chimpanzees have been perceived to use medicinal plants and minerals to treat numerous diseases (Goodall 1986). After spending the night on their night nests in the trees, they impatiently feed on fruits which is their main diet. They also feed on foliage, blossoms and buds. A while after their ravenous feeding, they become choosier and they will select only the ripest fruits. They generally pick a fruit with their hands, but eat berries and seeds straight off the stem with their lips. A Chimpanzee diet comprises of up to eighty variant types of plant foods and they will devote from six to eight hours on a daily basis in search of food. Occasionally, a chimpanzee being an omnivore, it supplements its diets with meat such as young goats or antelopes. However, most common preys of Chimpanzees are other primates, such as colobus monkeys, blue monkeys and young baboons (Goodall 1986). Behavior Chimpanzees get intimate with each other and it is not a great deal. They may even kiss when they happen to meet. A Chimpanzee tends to hold hands and clean each other. An adult chimpanzee frequently has a special acquaintance with which they devote a lot of time together. The Female chimpanzees give their infants a lot of attention and assist each other with babysitting responsibilities. In the troop, the older chimpanzees are normally quite patient with active youngsters unlike grandparents. Chimpanzees have opposable thumbs and tenacious grip which lets them to pick up objects and use “tools” for particular chores (Society, 2015). Regular chimpanzees are very social animals, with males establishing closer ties. The males stay in their mothers group all their livelihoods and create strong connections with other males from the troop. As a consequence, there is an establishment of supremacy hierarchies in which dominant males challenges to eliminate others from gaining access to females (Goodall 1986). However, females are less social as compared to male counterparts. They normally form strong relationships with their newborns and leave the maternal group to join a neighboring troop when they reach adolescence stage. This is entirely diverse from their close cousins, the bonobos (Goodall 1986). Communication is important in keeping chimpanzees in a harmonious community and avoid violence wherever possible. Chimpanzees are capable of conveying their feelings to one another using blends of facial expressions, sounds and body language. Functional communication facilitates chimpanzees to harmonize troop activities such as hunting and combat on neighboring chimpanzee rival troops (Society, 2015). Habitat Mostly, Chimpanzees are found to live in the dense forests of central Africa, where they spend most of their livelihood in the tree tops. When they do climb down to the ground, a chimpanzee normally walks on all four limbs. However, they can stand on their legs like humans for as far as a mile. Although there were perhaps millions of chimpanzees blooming 60 years ago, the prompt demolition of their forest habitat has minimized the population to around 200,000 (Society, 2015). Chimpanzees have extensive distribution of troop’s population; Chimpanzees live in a varied surrounding environment which encompasses of dry savannas, evergreen rainforests, montane forests, swamp forests and dry woodland- savanna mosaics. Additionally, to live across such varied habitats, chimpanzees must be quite flexible to adjust in these regions. In low-altitude rainforests, there is very small variation in temperature from one season to the other. The humidity is constantly in elevation and there are limited dry days each year (Society, 2015). On the contrary, the arid areas, including the north and southeastern confines of their range. Senegal and Tanzania respectively reveal enormous variations in temperature and humidity throughout the year as well as long dry seasons. Another dry territory where studies of chimpanzees were carried out is Semliki, Uganda. This place has a regular yearly rain of 1206 mm (3.95 ft) and extreme temperatures are 34°C (93.2°F) (Society, 2015). Categorizations of temperature and rainfall are typically accessible where a long-term study is being conducted. Gombe and Mahale are comparable in terms of character and climate, though Mahale is a little more humid with extra woodlands and greater mountains. Gombe is composed of sharp vertical ridges and valleys neighboring Lake Tanganyika, one of Africa’s Great Lakes. There is discernible seasonality in these regions, with the rainy season covering from mid-October to mid-May, and the rest of the year being very dry. Due to the drastic variations in altitude at Gombe, there are a diversity of vegetation categories all over the park: open woodland, subalpine moorland, beach, grassland that has dispersed trees, evergreen forest, and semi deciduous forest (Goodall 1986). At Bossou, the main region of the key area exploited by chimpanzees comprises of multi-stage secondary deciduous forest, ascending in areas uninhibited after changing from agriculture. The other regions at Bossou are main forests and grasslands. The chimpanzees at Taï occupy the only left over tropical rainforest in Côte DIvoire. While there is no real dry period, the rainy period is from March to June and between September and November, and the average minimum temperature is 18°C (64°F) (Society, 2015). Conclusion Use of Tools Chimpanzees are one of the few animal species that use tools to perform their daily chores. Moreover, Chimpanzees sharpen and use sticks to capture insects from their nests or dig grubs out of logs. Chimpanzees can also utilize stones to crash open tasty nuts and use the leaves as sponges to soak up drinking water. Furthermore, Chimpanzee tool usage consists of using big stick tools to dig in the termite mounds. Chimpanzees then use a small stick that has been transformed into a fishing rod to trawl the termites out. All chimpanzees across the populations have been documented to applying the use of tools to acquire some foods. Rocks, grass, leaves and sticks are all usually used materials that are later changed to tools. They are later used to obtain and eat ants, honey, water, nuts and termites. These tools may appear too unpolished to be considered as real tools, however, there definitely is confirmation that planning and intellectual skills are necessary to make and use the tools (Society, 2015). Lack of sophistication should not undermine them from the fact that they are still usable tools. For instance, to excerpt honey from the hives of stingless bees, chimpanzees use short branches stripped of their leaves, twigs and bark to most operational scoop it out of the hive. On the other hand, to excerpt honey from the hives of hostile African honeybees, chimpanzees use considerably longer and thinner sticks to evade the painful stings of these bees. In a similar approach, chimpanzees strip the leaves off of long, thin branches and use them to excerpt ants from ground nests (Goodall 1986). This exercise obliges for some amount of intellectual skills. Both the young ones and juvenile chimpanzees must exercise a great deal before learning the procedure essential to excerpt the ants still clinging to the thin, flexible stick (Society, 2015). In fact, some chimpanzees never entirely master the art of capturing ants and in general, females are more prosperous than males in this exertion (Goodall 1986). A comparable tool and skill is used to remove termites from nests at Gombe, but at Taï, the chimpanzees merely use their bare hands to extract termites. References Goodall, J. (1986). The chimpanzees of Gombe. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Rowe, N. (1996). The pictorial guide to the living primates. East Hampton, N.Y.: Pogonias Press. Society, N. (2015). Chimpanzees, Chimpanzee Pictures, Chimpanzee Facts - National Geographic. National Geographic. Retrieved 21 March 2015, from http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/chimpanzee/ Read More