CELEBRATING WORLD CHIMPANZEE DAY: How to get your little eco heroes championing the chimp

The 14th of July is World Chimpanzee Day, where people around the world unite to celebrate these incredible creatures - our closest living relatives in the animal kingdom - but also to raise awareness of the threats that they face.

14 July 1960 is the day that Dr Jane Goodall, then aged just 26 stepped into the Gombe Stream National Chimpanzee Reserve in Tanzania to start her groundbreaking research. Her work made some extraordinary discoveries and changed the way we think about chimpanzees for ever.

Are your littles eco heroes striving to follow the footsteps of Dr Jane Goodall and her amazing work with chimps? Are they fascinated by animals? Do you want to educate them in a fun and creative way? 

Today we’re celebrating World Chimpanzee day by uncovering five captivating facts about chimps and sharing insights on how you can support ongoing conservation efforts to protect their future.

Fascinating Fact #1

Chimps are definitely not picky eaters, instead they feast on just about anything…from fruit, leaves to flowers, insects and even other animals. Some greedy groups have been found to eat up to 200 different types of food.

Fascinating Fact #2

It’s no secret that chimpanzees share 98% of their DNA with us, making them our closest relative. Dr Jane Goodall studied their behaviour and discovered just how intelligent they really are. She made the world realise that these animals had the ability to talk using sign language, use basic tools and they even demonstrated personality types. 

Fascinating Fact #3

Chimps are impressive groomers, you can often see them bonding by removing bugs, dirt and other nasties off their hair. Younger chimps adapt to this behaviour by studying their mothers and often perform it in a similar way once they are older.

Fascinating Fact #4

A pant-hoot is a series of sounds made by chimps to communicate with each other. the pant-hoot usually starts with a soft breathy ‘hoo’ sounds, followed by faster panting that builds into high-frequency screams and then drops back down until the call is complete. This shows that chimps are incredibly vocal animals, that use a complicated set of sounds to communicate with each other.

Fascinating Fact #5

They can live a very long time. In the wild, it is expected that chimps will live up to 50 years and even longer in captivity. The oldest recorded chimp lived to 66 years old.

So its clear that chimps are amazing animals, which makes it even harder to imagine the possibility of a world without chimpanzees in the wild?

Scientists believe that there are fewer than 200,000 chimpanzees left, this classifies chimpanzees as an endangered species - they face threats from poaching, diseases to habitat loss.

Education is vital, we often overlook great apes and their contribution to biodiversity but today is a day that we can celebrate them and contribute our little part - so how can you get involved? Record a Pant hoot

To kickstart World Chimpanzee Day, Dr. Jane Goodall is encouraging you to record your own ‘pant hoot’ greeting and post it on social media with the #GiveaPANTHOOT hashtag. You can see an example here.

You can read more about what Dr Jane’s Roots & Shoots programme is doing to celebrate World Chimpanzee Day here.

Written by Alicja Sowinska for It’s Our Planet Too