I thought I'd write a diary about Chimp trivia. Here are some fascinating facts about chimpanzees.
- Chimpanzees have a curved spine, the earliest adaptation made for upright posture. They share that adaptation with humans and bonobos. Gorillas and orangutans do not share this adaptation.
- Jane Goodall was the one who discovered that chimps hunt using pack hunting techniques, while studying them at Gombe National Park in Tanzania.
- The fossil record of chimpanzees is much poorer than it is for humans. In fact, the first such fossils were only found four years ago.
- The first chimpanzee to be taught Ameslan (American Sign Language) was Washoe, who died in 2007.
- Because of the assertion that early Ameslan sign language experiments were contaminated by the use of body language on the part of trainers, Dr. Sue Savage Rumbaugh devised a lexigram system to train bonobos with.
- Dr. Savage-Rumbaugh spent months trying to teach a bonobo named Matata how to use her lexigram system. Although she did not have much luck with Matata, to her astonished surprise, Matata's son Kanzi had learned how to use Savage-Rumbaugh's system by indirectly observing his mother's lessons!
- Chimpanzees in Senegal were observed making and using spears for hunting. While many species (including crows and gorillas) have been seen making tools in the wild, this particular use makes chimpanzees the only species other than ourselves to actually make weapons.
- The first hominid in space was a chimpanzee named Ham.
- In the Tarzan novels, Tarzan does not have a chimpanzee sidekick named Cheeta. That was an innovation of the Johnny Weissmuller films.
- Chimpanzees use a unique form of locomotion called "knuckle walking", in which they fold their fingers down under the second knuckle and walk on them. Only chimpanzees, gorillas, and bonobos are fully adapted to this mode of walking. Human ancestors likely were as well, however since the time of Homo Erectus onward, we have lacked the locking wrists this mode of locomotion requires.
- Chimpanzees have 24 pairs of chromosomes, and humans have 23. In humans the ancestral pairs 2A and 2B folded into a single pair - however much of the DNA on this pair matches the chimpanzee counterpart.
- The Chimp Channel was a TV show that ran on the TBS Superstation in 1999, where chimpanzees mimicked the human actors from famous films. Parodies included that year's "Star Wars: The Phantom Menace."
- Guardian cartoonist Steve Bell first began to portray George W. Bush as a chimpanzee in April, 2001, after his initial run portrayed as a turkey.
- BUSHORCHIMP.COM was registered as a domain name on December 12, 2000, over a month before his inauguration.
UPDATE: here's a cool video of the above-mentioned bonobo, Kanzi, playing Pac-Man. I must admit, he plays it better than I do!