Results tagged “Chimps”

Chimpanzees are more like humans than researchers previously thought. In a new study performed in Japan, chimps helped other chimps get juice by passing them objects such as straws (to drink the juice) or sticks (to reach straws they couldn't reach). Researchers noticed that related chimps were more likely to help each other.

The chimps were trained to use sticks or straws to get juice, but they were not trained to pass things to each other.



Find out more about the research on National Geographic News.

Get the facts on chimpanzees in this Creature Feature.

Watch a video of a chimp solving a computer puzzle on News Bites.

Photograph by Miriam Wessels/University of Veterinary Medicine, Hannover, Germany


Marina Davila Ross of the U.K.'s University of Portsmouth led a team that tickled the necks, feet, palms, and armpits of chimp, orangutan, bonobo, gorilla, and human babies. All of the babies responded to the tickling with laughter. The study says that the ability to laugh like this comes from an ancestor that humans and great apes have in common.

Watch a video and hear chimp, gorilla, and orangutan laughter on National Geographic News.

Get the facts on orangutans in the Creature Feature.

Get the facts on chimpanzees in the Creature Feature.

Dr. Goodall does not handle wild chimps.  This orphan chimpanzee lives at a JGI sanctuary.
Photograph courtesy Michael Neugebauer

Jane Goodall, the well-renowned primatologist, has received the prestigious Leakey Prize for achievement in the fields of ape and human evolution. Dr. Leakey moved to the African jungle of Lake Tanganyika in 1960 to study chimpanzees, the closest living relatives of humans. Dr. Goodall has spent her career observing and documenting chimp behavior and working to conserve their natural habitats.
 
Dr. Goodall's research showed us that chimpanzees use tools, hunt, and form complex family relationships.  The Jane Goodall Institute for Wildlife Research, Education and Conservation includes a conservation education program, Roots & Shoots, which works with young people around the world.

Want to learn more about chimps? Check out the Creature Feature.

Image courtesy PRI, Kyoto University

Kyoto, Japan
Ayumu the chimp probably has a better memory than you do! Ayumu, a chimpanzee at the Primary Research Institute at Kyoto University in  Japan and three other chimps took the same memory test as college students. Numbers were flashed on a white screen, then turned into white squares. Test-takers then had to touch the squares in the correct order. Ayumu outscored the college students and the other chimps!

Watch a video of Ayumu completing the memory test.

Featured in National Geographic Kids magazine, October 2008
By Heather E. Schwartz