The Rare Pygmy Chimpanzee

Only identified as a species in 1933, pygmy chimpanzees are much gentler and more intelligent than common chimpanzees. Researchers tell of pygmy chimps exchanging prolonged eye contact with them and of the feeling that they try to communicate about things in the past. Their social groups are more stable and they don’t tend to cluster in single-sex groups as favoured by their common chimp cousins. In pygmy chimp society the females form alliances and dominate social groups — both male roles in common chimp society. Pygmy chimpanzees have more slender upper bodies than common chimpanzees, are more arboreal, have a greater tendency to walk upright and are known to share their food. While common chimps restrict their plant-food intake mainly to fruit, pygmy chimps eat leaves and plant pith as well as fruit, a diet more like that of gorillas. While they have been known to capture and eat small game they are not known to systematically hunt down and eat large animals such as monkeys, as common chimps are known to do.