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Chimpanzees - Referat
Chimpanzees
1. Introduction and distribution
The chimpanzees are a species of monkeys which count to the hominids. They are the closest relatives of the human and they live in middle Africa. There exist two kinds of chimpanzees, the common chimpanzee and the bonobo which is much smaller. I´m going to tell you more about the common chimpanzee. They live mainly in Senegal, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda and Tanzania.
2. Body structure
Adult male animals can grow up to an erected size of 1.70 metres and can weigh up to 50 kilograms. Female chimpanzees are a bit smaller. Their coat´s colour is dark brown or nearly black. The arms are clearly longer than the legs. Chimpanzees move on all four legs and can grab and hold things with their hands like human. They have more than twice as much muscular mass as human have. Because of their strong teeth and their power, chimpanzees can be very dangerous for other animals or people.
3. Living space
The chimpanzees live both in the rain forests and in the dry, treeless savannahs. Normally they are awake on the day. For every night they build a new nest with leaves in the trees. They can climb very well but they stay the most time on the ground.
4. Nutrition
Chimpanzees eat everything, but they especially eat fruits like bananas and mangos, nuts and leaves. They also like flowers, seeds and insects. Sometimes they catch little mammals like bats, antelopes and little monkeys. They drink extremely seldom because there is enough water in the fruits. With wooden sticks they get honey out of the bee gums or ants out of the anthills.
5. Lifestyle
The chimpanzees live in groups of 20 to 80 animals which have further groups for example the search for food or the defending of the whole horde. An important task for the males is to get a better rank in the group. The females are often rogue. Sometimes they have ranks, too. The animal with the highest position get babies more often than the others. Between six and eleven years old they are sexually adult. After eight months a baby chimpanzee is born. That’s similar to us, because with the human babies it lasts nine months. They can get 40 years old. Feminine chimpanzees can get one baby in five to six years.
6. Threat and Enemies
Chimpanzees are very threatened in nature. They often lose their living space, because people clear a lot of forest lands. Sometimes human hunt them for their meat or because they destroy plantations. In the past chimpanzees were caught for animal testing or to be pets. Now there are only 300.000 wild living animals left. Natural enemies are big cats like leopards, parasites and above all the human. When one monkey is attacked by a wild cat, it is defended by the whole group. They cry, throw sticks or just walk toward their enemies, to chase them off.
Chimpanzees are popular animals and we like them very much, because they are very similar to us. They took them as actors for films, like “Unser Charly”. Chimpanzees are often in circuses, too and in nearly every zoo.
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