Chimpanzee

Jane Goodall is not only a famous anthropologist, she is also known for her work as a primatologist, actor, screenwriter, and researcher, but she took a huge interest with animals, especially chimpanzees. Ever since childhood Goodall has shown an interest in animals. By the age of 26 in the year 1960, Goodall traveled to Gombe where she first started her study of chimpanzees.To get to where she is today she worked very hard not just to get to Africa but also to pay for college. “When Goodall…

Lori Gruen 's "Captive Kin" takes a look at what it must be like to be held captive. She asks the reader to examine whether imprisoning apes or humans does harm to them even though they may deserve captivity as a punishment. She goes on to explore whether animals engage in autonomous behaviors, not by verbalization, but by non-language behaviors. Lastly the author brings to light the need to hold some animals’ captive due to the moral implications of releasing them back to the wild. In “Captive…

Scientists are often called upon to answer fundamental questions about human variation and its ramifications. While it is easy to get caught up in the idea of being so vastly genetically similar to our ape-like relatives, the assumptions underlying genetic data have more significance than the data itself. This can be seen when studying genetic and behavioral parallels of apes and humans, and how each affects the other with regards to phenotypic similarity. For all of its grandeur, a DNA sequence…

has been discredited with the discoveries of early hominid remains. For example, the 4.4 million year old female Ardipithecus ramidus, nicknamed “Ardi,” indicates an anatomical connection between early hominids and our closest living relative, the chimpanzee. Some of the physical similarities described in an article posted in Discover Magazine are, “the lower part of Ardi's hip was powerfully primitive, adapted for climbing. In contrast, the upper part of the hip, the ilium, was surprisingly…

opposable thumbs! We also use them in pretty much the same ways, as you will see when information about behavioral similarities is given. But first, another point that leads towards humans evolving from apes are genetic similarities. Both the human and chimpanzee genomes have been sequenced. When scientists compared the two they discovered the two were 96% the same. Most of the differences were due to duplications of some of the genes. If you ignore the duplications then chimps and humans are…

persisted in making her demands for improvement known. Her determination led researchers to comply to her suggestions even if they were not originally in support of the changes (Welty, "300 Days"). Goodall possessed a large array of knowledge regarding chimpanzee behavior from her individual studies, and she…

her discoveries. This discovery convinced several scientists to reconsider their definition of human being (Sciencedaily.com). The biggest observation she made was chimpanzees have very complex and highly developed social castes. The dominant male chimpanzee is at the top of the social caste and the other chimpanzees below the dominant male try to avoid him as much as possible so they do not experience harm (Biography.com). All in all, Jane Goodall realized that chimpanzees are much like humans…

blame for the population disappearing lies on commercial and sport hunting for bushmeat. These cute and playful animals are endangered. Humans and chimps are very closely related around 95% of chimp genes are shared with humans. The characteristic chimpanzee shape includes an opposable thumb kind of like humans, long arms that extend past their knees. A prominent mouth. The skin on the face, ears, palms, and soles of their feet is bare, and the rest of the body is covered in shades of brown and…

Frans De Waal, a leading primatologist and author of many other books, including The Bonobo and the Atheist and Chimpanzee Politics: Power and Sex Among Apes, now 69 years old is the director of the Living Links Center and the Charles Howard Candler professor of Primate Behavior at Emory University. Frans De Waal is from The Netherlands, but is currently living in Atlanta, Georgia. De Waal has received many awards, such as the 2015 ASP Distinguished Primatologist Award, the 2014 Galileo Prize,…

Male aggression against females and male aggression against males shows us considerable variation among the primates. In many primates, the aggression is rare, mild, or limited and in some cases, it can get violent and cause huge fights with serious injuries. They are so many theories that involve in the evolution of violence. Darwin’s theory of natural selection argued that violent behavior in species just like other physical characteristics passed on to the future generations. How these traits…