Chimpanzees

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Chimpanzees

Chimpanzees have proven to be one of the most scientifically interesting animal species alive today. Many factors contribute to the attention this species receives. In my opinion, the most interesting of which is the extremely close resemblance between humans and chimpanzees. It is a scientific fact that humans and chimpanzees share a 98.5% genetic similarity. Additionally, chimpanzees have shown to be extremely intelligent compared to other primates (not including humans).

Characteristics
Chimpanzees belong to the family Pongidae. This family is commonly referred to as the “Great Apes”. The pongids are known for their large build, strong jaws, and larger brains than other primates (excluding humans of course). Specifically, the male common chimp can grow up to a little over 5 and one half feet tall and can weigh up to 154 pounds. Chimpanzees are sexually dimorphic in terms of their body size meaning that female chimps are somewhat smaller than males. Chimpanzees are covered with hair on their entire body except for their face, fingers, palms, and soles of the foot.
The full taxonomic breakdown is as follows. Chimps belong to the kingdom Animalia, which means that they eat food, can intentionally move, and have sense and nervous systems. The fact that they have a bony spinal cord puts them in the phylum Cordata with a subphylum of Vertebrata. Chimps are of the Mammalia class. Mammals, as most of us know, have hair, give live birth, and are warm-blooded. From this point chimps are placed into the order Primate along with a suborder of Antrhopoidea (“human like”), an infraorder of Catarrhini (“hook nosed” and also meaning they are an Old World primate), a superfamily of Hominoidea (meaning they are larger [brain size included] and tailless) and, lastly, the family Pongidae. From here, its simple, they belong to the genus Pan and the species troglodytes.
Chimpanzees are found primarily in Africa, zoos, a...