Chimpanzees: Our Closest Relatives

Chimpanzees are fascinating and alluring creatures to most humans. Seeing them up close for the first time, adults and children are drawn to them. Their obvious similarity to humans makes them universally appealing to people. Our fascination with creatures that resemble us most can be traced back to the ancient Greeks. Aristotle talked about "apes" three centuries before Christ. In 1640 the Prince of Orange was presented with a chimpanzee; the first chimpanzee known to be in Europe. Sometime before 1700, an English physician who described it as being an animal though “sort of like” man, dissected a chimpanzee. Within two hundred years, chimpanzees were on exhibit in zoological gardens and in the late 1800s, Charles Darwin, intrigued by the facial expressions of chimpanzees, wrote of their similarity to humans and pondered the question of a possible shared common ancestor.

Field studies of chimpanzee behavior conducted continuously over nearly forty years recorded and described a wide variety of chimpanzee behavior. To this knowledge base was added information obtained from laboratory and zoo behavioral studies. The result is a growing detailed picture of the lives of chimpanzees.

For millions of people, National Geographic documentaries about the wild chimpanzees of Gombe provided their first learning experience with these intelligent apes. They watched Flo and David Greybeard and followed the stories of their lives. Jane Goodall, the young English woman who studied them, also became familiar and cherished. Dr. Goodall’s books and lectures about chimpanzee mothers and infants, making and using tools, politics and many other subjects have broadened the public’s knowledge of chimpanzees. Additional information on biological similarities, especially DNA studies of primates, increased our awareness of the genetic heritage shared by chimpanzees and humans.

Chimpanzees, the lesser known bonobo species, and humans share a common ancestor that lived about 4 or 5 million years ago. Genetically, chimpanzees are more closely related to us than they are to gorillas. Chimpanzees and humans share about 98.4% of their DNA.