Are chimpanzees like us?

Did you know that chimpanzees share 98.9% of their DNA with humans? So what are the similarities between humans and their closest relatives - the chimps? We went on a hike in Kibale National Park in western Uganda to track chimpanzees and learn firsthand. There are over 1,500 chimpanzees living there, divided into around a dozen communities, 5 of which are habituated to humans. 

The chimpanzees we saw were similar to us in some ways and different from us in other ways. One of the ways they were similar was in how they rested. The alpha male of the group sat down and crossed his legs, and rested them on a sapling like how we rest our legs on a table. Their hands looked just like ours, with opposable thumbs. Their facial expressions also looked a lot like humans, for example, the way they smiled. It also really seemed like they were posing for pictures like influencers on Instagram. They primarily eat fruits and vegetables, but occasionally have the red colobus monkeys for special occasions, so are omnivorous like humans. 

In this photo you can see the chimpanzee laying down with its legs crossed and his opposable big toe

This photo is of a chimpanzee yawning.

This is what I looked like when I was a little kid and my mom told me to smile.

In terms of differences, unlike us, they are primarily quadrupeds, meaning they use four limbs to walk. While their hands look like ours, their feet look nothing like ours because they have opposable toes, so they can pick things up with their feet. Unlike humans, they also spend most of their life in trees and climb them with ease. Chimpanzees sleep in trees each night in makeshift nests made of leaves and branches that look like a hawk nest. They make a new nest each day in only 3 minutes! 

Here's a chimpanzee walking.

This is a mother chimpanzee with her baby climbing a tree.

Hiking to find the chimpanzees was a fun adventure. It took us about an hour to track them down. We had to hike through a swamp, and I stood on a safari ant track and got devoured by ants. When we found the chimps, they were high in the trees. We had to follow them for a while as they swung from tree to tree until they finally came down to the ground. Then they let us get very close, and we were able to take lots of great pictures. The entire tracking adventure took 2 ½ hours and we hiked 6.3 miles.

This is the walk that we did.