SUPER excited about blogging this week because they’re both about animals and that is all I ever want to write about!! Some may say I have issues, but it’s cool. I’ve accepted it. Anyway since I watched Jane Goodall’s TED talk, I thought it would be perfect to talk about the focus of her life’s work, chimpanzees! I want to give a little background on all the work she has done before I talk more about the chimps themselves. When she was 26, Jane Goodall left her home in England to travel to what is now called Tanzania. The only things she had for her research were a pair of binoculars and a notebook. She spent so much time around them that they eventually began to trust her. She gave people the opportunity to understand the strange and sometimes extremely familiar-seeming lifestyles of these creatures. By gaining and sharing her understanding of chimps, she peaked people’s interest in their protection. She works tirelessly even 54 years later to help make the world a better place for everyone and everything, people, animals, and the environment as a whole.
Okay, enough about Jane Goodall, let’s talk about chimpanzees! These poor things are up there on the endangered list. At most, there are around 299,700 left. Mind blowing fact for those of you who don’t know, chimps and humans share 98% of genes!! They’re our closest relatives, which explains why we have such similar behaviors. They’re like smaller, hairier humans which I find super cool. They’re a great example of how the line between humans and animals is very blurry. We share so much in common with these hairy creature, but we have many social and behavioral similarities with the rest of the world’s creatures. Chimps inhabit the forests in central Africa and mostly hang out in treetops, as you’d expect. They tend to walk on all fours when they aren’t swinging around in the trees, but they have the ability to walk on their hind legs for as far as a mile! (Little hairy people, I’m telling ya.) They make tools out of their surroundings such as using sticks to get termites out of their mounds and leaves to get drinking water.
Why are they endangered? Well, one of the huge factors is something that’s very relevant at the moment, ebola. It has killed tens of thousands of these apes. Also illegal wildlife trade/poaching is a big problem. People take infant chimps away from their mothers and sell them as pets to wealthy people. It would be awesome to have a little ape running around my dorm room, but I can’t imagine how horrible the little things must feel separated from their parents. People can be so cruel.
Luckily, the WWF is establishing, strengthening, and managing protected areas in Central and West Africa. They protect them through effective law and antipoaching enforcement, help governments set up and maintain national parks, keep a close eye on the population, work on sustainability in respect to forest resources in buffer zones around the parks, and developed chimp-focused ecotourism.
Pictures, pictures, pictures!!! The second one is too adorable…look at it go!
kic5348 says
The pictures are adorable! It is so interesting how genetically similar we are to chimps, however we treat them as we would treat any other animal. The fact that they also are struggling with Ebola is yet another similarity…very intriguing!
Kevin Diguiseppe says
I’ve always been into nature and our relationship with other animals as well! I especially love chimps also because of how closely we’re related to them. This is a great post because it highlights the current issues surrounding chimps and makes the reader feel concern for them. Nice job!