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They also eat invertebrates, mushrooms, leaves, and even soil which is believed to neutralize toxins in their food.īut 60% of their diet is fruit, predominantly figs.Ĭhimps love figs. However, meat only makes up about 2% of their diet. When the opportunity arises, they will feed on small mammals in the forest, particularly red colobus monkeys, forest antelopes like duikers and bush babies, which they remove from holes in trees with spears they make. © Mark Jordahl Don’t Tell the Kids – Sugar Builds Big BrainsĪs these canines show, chimpanzees are equipped for hunting. Now let’s learn about some fascinating things researchers have discovered about chimps in the last six decades. How do you understand the behaviors and social dynamics of a species that can live for 30 years or more with a 6-month or one-year study? Sixty years of continuous study at Gombe has allowed insights such as the fact that they hunt, the ritual sharing of meat, the presence of warfare between chimp communities and, of course, tool use.

Perhaps most significantly, she kept doing it WAY longer than anyone else. We would not understand chimpanzee behavior and intelligence in the way we do today if Jane Goodall hadn’t paved the way for us. That was unheard of at the time, but today few people think of chimpanzees as mechanical clusters of instincts. She saw the chimpanzees as individuals with personalities and gave them names rather than numbers. Second, she did her research differently than anyone else, initially causing traditional scientists to disregard her results. In Jane’s own words, “When I was a little girl, I used to dream as a man, because I wanted to do things that women didn’t do back then such as traveling to Africa, living with wild animals and writing books.” Fortunately for all of us, she saw her gender as an asset rather than an obstacle in the male-dominated field of scientific research.

She was a trailblazer in a field that didn’t want her in the 1960s.

She is now universally regarded as a giant in the world of science and conservation after fighting to be taken seriously for two main reasons.įirst, she had the audacity to do field research as a woman. Jane Goodall wasn’t the first to study chimpanzees when she set up her camp in Gombe on Lake Tanganyika at the request of the famed paleontologist Louis Leakey, but she changed the way field biology is done. And if you know a little about the complexities of chimpanzee behavior, an encounter with these great apes becomes truly fascinating.īefore diving into some interesting facts about chimps, though, it is important to recognize that World Chimpanzee Day, and much of what we have learned about chimpanzee behavior over the last 60 years, would probably not exist without one diminutive woman who has had an outsized impact on science. You are fully immersed, walking through the forest with all your senses awakened. Unlike a traditional African safari, you are not separated from the environment by the shell of a Landcruiser. This is one of the most thrilling sounds in nature, and you can’t help but feel your heart race when you hear the first far-off calls echoing through the equatorial rain forest on a primate safari. The video captures the calls of an extended community of chimps gathering in a large fig tree to feed and build their nests for the night. I want to open this post by bringing you into Kibale National Park in Uganda to experience the sounds you might encounter while chimpanzee trekking on a Great Uganda Gorilla Safari with Natural Habitat Adventures. Celebrate World Chimpanzee Day on July 14 with Nat Hab