Chimpanzees: Even More Like Humans Than We Think

One more piece of evidence that chimpanzees are far more like humans than we tend to, and probably want to, admit: BBC News reports scientists in Scotland and others from Oxford University have documented behavior which suggests chimpanzees emotionally feel death much like humans do.

In the first case, the behavior of chimps after the death of a terminally ill 50-year-old female chimp at a Scottish safari park was documented with video cameras. Her friends and family became lethargic leading up to the death and stayed with her, grooming her in the final moments. After she died, her daughter stayed near the body, even though she had never slept nearby before.

In the second, also documented on video, mothers of dead chimps carried around and defended the bodies of their dead, and later naturally mummified, offspring for over two months.

Boundaries Between Humans and Animals Not As Clearly Defined
James Anderson, who led the first study:

Several phenomena have at one time or another been considered as setting humans apart from other species: Reasoning ability, language ability, tool use, cultural variation, and self-awareness, for example. But science has provided strong evidence that the boundaries between us and other species are nowhere near to being as clearly defined as people used to think.

It’s Time for Extending Human Rights…
The natural extension of this is, if chimps are better than 99 percent the same as humans biologically, have greater cognitive ability than previously thought, and now also have emotionally-similar grieving to humans, how can we justify testing products on them without consent? How can we keep them in conditions that are less comfortable than we ourselves would stay in? Really, shouldn’t we be talking about extending what we now call human rights to at least some non-human animals?

Read more: Do Good, Pets, animal rights, chimpanzees, feel death

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of
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Waltraud U.

11:46AM PST on Feb 3, 2012

I LOVE THEM ALL !
Thanks - nice article.

send a green star

colleen p.

5:38PM PDT on Aug 14, 2011

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1362051/How-chimpanzees-just-like-humans-They-laugh-jokes-bond-funny.html here. someone do a news submission on this

Elizabeth T.

9:48AM PDT on Jul 8, 2011

Chimps aren't "Monkeys" they are "Apes". HIV came from eating monkeys.
Chimps are cousins to humans, they often reflect our darker side. They are very smart. They can be very violent creatures. Dare I say, they hate? They war with each other, use weapons, raid neighboring tribes & slaughter their enemy for no other reason than they want what the other has. That's greed. They are a lot more like us than we care to admit. Also smart, peaceful & sweet to each other, picking out fleas & eating leafs as TV shows. They can tear a man's arms out of their sockets on a whim or rip a woman's face off. They do eat meat. The males hunt in parties.
Someone said Chimps are more "Ethical" than humans. "Ethics" is a human thing. We ponder right/wrong & good/bad.To wild creatures, you do what you do. That's life. If they had the luxury of being governed by "Ethics" I'm sure the Red Colobus Monkeys wouldn't think Chimps are very "Ethical" at all. Chimps prey on & eat monkeys, particularly the infants & children of the Red Colobus Monkeys.
Then there's Bonobos. They seem to reflect the peaceful side of humanity almost like wise jungle hippies, they practice "free love". They are Matriarchal. They hunt & eat meat too. They work together like a commune. Hunting parties are males & females cooperating for the tribe.

Have a healthy respect for the individual creatures & their culture but, they aren't us. We're same yet different. Knowing that we can

5:44AM PDT on Jul 2, 2011

Recently well informed researchers in animal behaviour said that despite all the money spent on research, that something as important as the study of animals to determine their capabilities had been allowed to lie fallow for far too long. I have lived and attended to the needs of fifteen dogs and the things I have seen have made me realize just how little we value their humanity. In many ways, without exaggerating, I think that they are capable of much we have never evolved to. One of my dogs, as you can see in Utube under Podenco Michael Mifsud, actually practiced hard to make frankenstein faces to scare his new nephews. I saw it all and filmed the amazing sequence in which he tired himself out trying to keep a straight face. I also saw in my minds eye, what appeared to be a dying dolphin or diver in black wet suit and gathered a crowd round me on a beach- incredulous as I explained what appeared to be out there. Nothing in sight, but the next day late in the afternoon, a whole crowd waited for me to show a dead dolphin in the blazing heat, exactly where I had stood. I told the chairman of the Koestler Chair of Parapsycology in the the UK about it and he said that all dolphin studies had been put under national security cover and much to his chagrin because it was an area that they were very much interested in.

5:28AM PDT on Jul 2, 2011

Chimps also do negitive things humans do. like murder, have wars, get revenge and form hunting parties. right?

Julie v.

9:27PM PST on Feb 9, 2011

There is one exeption - they are more ethical that humans

Ana C.

5:55AM PST on Dec 21, 2010

To Isabel C. "If so, why have these people not been told how dangerous it is to eat these primates and vigorously educated to not eat them?"
The answer is both simple and complicated...
War and hunger make human desperate populations in almost all of Africa, after colonization remained a geographic and ethnic chaos all over the continent, fuelling more conflict, more hunger, more dislodging of people, more chaos still.
Almost every local population with simple and sustainable habits including taboos of (not) eating other primate species were either forced out of their territories or killed. As simple and horrifying as that...
The "new human inhabitants" close to the natural parks and reserves are usually foreigners living in misery and their only wish is to survive and make the most and usually have kids to feed too... Where will they get time or means to have an education?!
And this situation is perfect for the corrupt governments all over Africa because a starving and uneducated people is easy to control and (ab)use. They will do whatever they have to to get some money/food and then some "middlemen" and or governments will sell bushmeat, timber, coltan, copper, gold, diamons (pick the poison) to... TURISTS and/or big companies and governments from EUROPEAN/AMERICAN/ASIAN countries.
Because the average wager from these european/american/asian just wants to get another cellphone/laptone/whatever with some fancy feature that there is really no need for; or likes to trave

Isabel C.

2:26PM PDT on Sep 9, 2010

I thought that the Aids virus was believed to have originated in monkeys or chimps eaten by Africans. Is this still the case? If so, why have these people not been told how dangerous it is to eat these primates and vigorously educated to not eat them?

Michaela M.

7:21PM PDT on Sep 8, 2010

I strongly believe a fair indicator of a humane human is evidenced in how they react to and treat non-human animals- by all means "human rights" should extend to both wild and domestic non-humans.

C. G.

11:14AM PDT on Sep 7, 2010

This doesn't surprise me either...