"Roy" The Chimpanzee from Ol Pejeta (Sweetwaters)

From the National Geographic website:

What is the chimpanzee?

Chimpanzees are great apes found across central and West Africa. Along with bonobos, they are our closest living relatives, sharing 98.7 percent of our genetic blueprint. Humans and chimps are also thought to share a common ancestor who lived some seven to 13 million years ago.

Behavior

Chimpanzees are highly social. They live in communities of several dozen animals, led by an alpha male and his coalition of male allies. Research has shown that male and female chimps have individual personalities, with females being more trusting and timid. Grooming is an important part of their social life, helping chimpanzees bond as they remove ticks and dirt from one another’s bodies.

Although they normally walk on all fours (knuckle-walking), chimpanzees can stand and walk upright. Chimpanzees have long arms, hands, and fingers, which help them climb trees and swing from branch to branch.

Tool use

This intelligent animal is one of the few species we know to use tools—which primatologist Jane Goodall famously observed in 1960. Her groundbreaking discovery led archeologist Louis Leakey to declare, “Now we must redefine ‘tool,’ redefine ‘man,’ or accept chimpanzees as humans.”

As Goodall observed, chimpanzees shape and use sticks to retrieve insects from their nests or dig grubs out of logs. They use stones to smash open tasty nuts and employ leaves as sponges to soak up drinking water. And chimpanzees can even be taught to use some basic human sign language.

Threats to survival

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature has declared the chimpanzee an endangered species—and the booming human population is primarily to blame. As humans move into more and more of the chimp’s geographic range, they clear away the ape’s forest habitat to make way for agriculture. Logging, mining, oil extraction, and new road and highway projects threaten to further degrade and fragment the chimp’s habitat.

In western Uganda, habitat loss has fueled conflict between humans and our closest relatives. Deforestation not only makes it harder for chimps to find a place to live, but it also strains their wild food supply. In desperation, many resort to foraging from the homes of humans nearby. Though they mostly steal fruit and other food within reach, the apes occasionally snatch and kill small children. Humans kill chimps in retaliation and to protect their families from future attacks.

Bushmeat hunters target chimps because they provide more meat than smaller mammals, sometimes collecting their offspring as pets for themselves or to sell into the illegal pet trade. And chimpanzees are susceptible to infectious diseases, too. Since the 1980s, the Ebola virus has killed them in significant numbers.