Common Chimpanzee

Fun facts

• Chimpanzees share roughly 98.8% of their DNA with humans — our closest living relatives along with bonobos, and the textbook example of behavioural-cultural variation in wild apes.
• Different chimp populations use different tool kits — termite-fishing twigs in Gombe, nut-cracking stone anvils in the Taï Forest, leaf-sponges for drinking in Mahale, each transmitted by observational learning rather than instinct.
• Wild chimps hunt cooperatively, most often for red colobus monkeys, with documented role differentiation (drivers, blockers, ambushers) similar to lion or wolf hunts.
• They have a complex political life — male coalitions form and dissolve to challenge alpha males, and Jane Goodall's long-running Gombe study has tracked these dynamics across five decades.
• The IUCN lists the species as Endangered with a continuing decline; the four subspecies are unevenly threatened, with the Western chimpanzee already Critically Endangered.