![]() As with bonobos and gorillas, chimps move quadrupedal by knuckle-walking, which probably evolved independently in Pan and Gorilla. On the ground chimps move both quadrupedal and bipedal, which appear to have similar energy costs. Arboreal locomotion consists of vertical climbing and brachiation. #Chimpanzee hands skin#The skin may range from pale to dark, females develop swelling pink skin when in oestrus.Ĭhimpanzees are adapted for both arboreal (travelling by trees) and terrestrial locomotion. As they get older, white or grey patches may appear, particularly on the chin and lower region. The hair of a chimp is typically black but can be brown or ginger. Chimps lose more hair as they age, and develop bald spots. It has forward-facing eyes, a small nose, rounded non-lobed ears, a long mobile upper lip and, in adult males, sharp canine teeth.Ĭhimpanzee bodies are covered by coarse hair, except for the face, fingers, toes, palms of the hands, and soles of the feet. A chimp's head is rounded with a prominent and prognathous face. The feet are adapted for grasping, the big toe being opposable. The hands have long fingers with short thumbs and flat fingernails. The arms of a chimp are longer than its legs, and can reach below the knees. The build is more robust than the bonobo's but less than the gorilla's. Adult males weigh between 88–132 lb while females weighing between 60–110 lb. There might be a lot of hand clasping going on that I will never know.Chimpanzees have a standing height of 3.3–4.6 ft tall. “I only see what the chimpanzees show me. The difficulty, as in this study, lies in the limitations of observational data, van Leeuwen notes. The team is also looking for signs of dominance in hand clasps and other potential functions of this behavior. Van Leeuwen and his colleagues are currently researching potential differences in how chimps learn handclasp behaviors-for example, from peers, a parent, or other adults-and whether this acquisition is flexible. Perry is less convinced, suspecting that chimps and humans could have evolved independently to learn socially and build culture. “In the absence of broader comparative data it is hard to say whether this shared feature is more due to a shared phylogenetic history or to similar need for social conventions (convergent evolution).” “The motivation/drive to learn socially is most likely a widespread phenomenon that is both spurred by similar selection pressures and phylogenetically preserved,” he writes in an email to The Scientist. Given chimps’ close genetic relationship with humans, he suspects social learning was a quality found in the common ancestor of the two species. Van Leeuwen sees a potential link between this chimp cultural behavior-and specifically, their ability to learn and then maintain customs over long periods of time-and the evolution of human social behavior. While the function of handclasping is not known, University of Antwerp researcher Edwin van Leeuwen, the study’s author, says he’s not bothered by the ease of comparing these handclasps to human handshakes, themselves a cultural behavior. Andrews in Scotland, first reported observing handclasp grooming in wild chimps in 1978, and this behavior among chimp dyads has attracted increasing research interest in recent years. “The longevity of is new,” she adds, noting that the semi-wild setting of the Chimfunshi Wildlife Orphanage Trust in Zambia where the research was conducted means that the study’s findings likely apply to wild chimps, too.Ĭhimp researcher William McGrew, then affiliated with the University of St. “The fact that different groups of chimps have different repertoires of gestures is something we’ve known for some time,” says Mary Lee Jensvold, the associate director of the chimp sanctuary Fauna Foundation, who was not involved in the research, but it was not clear how stable these behaviors were. The study findings represent a step forward in understanding chimp sociality and chimp culture-the behavioral patterns that are learned from others in a social group. Over a 12-year span, two groups of chimpanzees maintained distinct, consistent styles of clasping hands while grooming one another, according to a study published May 26 in Biology Letters. ![]()
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