Chimps are People too!

Welcome to our website! We are students at Fanshawe College in London, Ontario, Canada. Currently we are taking a primatology course that is quite unique, and we would like to share what we have learned with you. We hope this will be an eye opener for you . . . thanks to Jane Goodall’s discovery in 1960 while living in Gombe, Tanzania the scientific community was forever changed, as it turned out these highly cognitive beings were capable of not only making, but also using their own tools.

As human beings, we share 98.7 percent of our DNA with chimpanzees: interestingly, chimpanzees are more closely related to us and they are to gorillas. Familial relationships are an integral part of chimpanzee society, much the same way as with humans the first five years of chimpanzees life are perhaps the most important and formative years of its life. The positive relationship between a mother chimpanzee and her offspring is the basis for which the development of social interaction is formed for which it will be a blueprint for them to follow throughout their lives which is crucial for their survival and their place within chimpanzee society.