Chimpanzee

Chimpanzee, often reduced to chimp, is the common name for the two extant species in the genus Pan. The better known chimpanzee is Pan Troglodytes, the ordinary Chimpanzee, living primarily in West, and Central Africa. Its cousin, the Bonobo or "Pygmy Chimpanzee" as it is known archaically, Pan Paniscus, is establishing in the forests of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The Congo River forms the boundary among the two species.

Anatomical differences between ordinary and Pygmy Chimpanzees are slight, but in sexual and social behavior there are marked differences. Common Chimpanzees have an omnivorous diet, a troop hunting society based on beta males led by a relatively weak alpha, and highly compound social relationships; Bonobos, on the other hand, have a typically herbivorous diet and an egalitarian, matriarchal, sexually accessible behavior. The showing skin of the face, hands and feet varies from pink to very dark in both species, but is usually lighter in younger individuals, darkening as maturity is reached. Bonobos have longer arms and tend to walk upright more often than the Common Chimpanzee.

Africans have had contact with chimpanzees for millennia. The primary recorded contact of Europeans with chimps took rest in present-day Angola during the 1600s. The record of Portuguese explorer Duarte Pacheco Pereira (1506), preserved in the Portuguese National Archive (Torre do Tombo), is perhaps the first European document to acknowledge that chimpanzees built their own rudimentary tools.

The first use of the name "chimpanzee", however, did not happen until 1738. The name is derived from a Tshiluba language term "kivili-chimpenze", which is the limited name for the animal and translates insecurely as "mock man" or possibly just "ape". The colloquialism "chimp" was most probable coined some time in the late 1870s. Science would finally take the 'pan' occurring in 'chimpanzee' and attribute it to Pan, a rural ancient Greek god of nature. Biologists would concern Pan as the genus name of the animal. Chimps as well as other apes had also been supposed to have existed in ancient times, but did so largely as myths and legends on the edge of Euro-Arabic societal consciousness, mostly through fragmented and sketchy accounts of European adventurers. Apes are mentioned variously by Aristotle, as healthy as the Bible.