The youngster also watches as adults use tools to get food - sticks for grabbing termites, stones for cracking nuts. The little ape spends many hours watching its mom select fruits and other foods, learning what is good to eat. But during these early years, the youngster is learning how to find its own food. The young chimp will nurse until the age of about four. After about six months, and for the next several years, the young chimp hitches a ride on mom's back. For the first few months of its life, the little one sticks close to mom, clinging to her underbelly when she's on the move. A baby chimp weighs about four pounds at birth. The length of gestation (pregnancy) averages 230 days, or about 7 1/2 months. Sometimes a high-ranking male will try to guard the female and prevent her from mating with other males. When a female is in estrus (in heat), she'll usually approach - and mate with - several males. Their skin is colored pink when they're young, but darkens with age.Ī female chimp is ready to mate when she's about 13 years old. Chimps' face and the underside of their hands and feet have no hair. (In captivity, both males and females can weigh more.)īlack hair covers most of their body, though older chimps are prone to graying hair and baldness (just like us!). In the wild, females can weigh up to 110 pounds and males, up to 155 pounds. When standing upright, adult chimps are about three to five feet tall. They can walk on two legs for short distances. Like gorillas, chimps walk on the knuckles of their hands and the flat soles of their feet. Their long arms come in useful here, too, because these apes usually walk on all fours. They do most of their traveling on the ground. Chimps spend a lot of time in trees, where they do most of their feeding and nesting.Ĭhimps may travel through the trees, moving from branch to branch - but only for short distances. These apes have very long, powerful arms and long-fingered hands - perfect for hanging around in trees. Chimpanzees and all other nonhuman primates have only the working version in other words, they’re on the powerful, “sprinter” end of the spectrum.What's one of the first things you notice about chimpanzees? Probably their arms. People with two working versions of this gene are overrepresented among elite sprinters while those with the nonworking version are overrepresented among endurance runners. (Puny jaws have marked our lineage for as least 2 million years.) Many people have also lost another muscle-related gene called ACTN3. One gene, for example, called MYH16, contributes to the development of large jaw muscles in other apes. In the past few years, geneticists have identified the loci for some of these anatomical differences. A chimpanzee’s skeletal muscle has longer fibers than the human equivalent and can generate twice the work output over a wider range of motion. But a more important factor seems to be the structure of the muscles themselves. How did we get to be the weaklings of the primate order? Our overall body architecture makes a difference: Even though chimpanzees weigh less than humans, more of their mass is concentrated in their powerful arms. But it is a fact that chimpanzees and other apes are stronger than humans. So the figures quoted by primate experts are a little exaggerated.
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