The chimpanzee is covered in coarse black hair but has a bare face, fingers, toes, palms of the hands, and soles of the feet.

Nearly all chimpanzee populations have been recorded using tools, modifying sticks, rocks, grass and leaves and using them for hunting and acquiring honey, termites, ants, nuts and water.

[11][12] The first great ape known to Western science in the 17th century was the "orang-outang" (genus Pongo), the local Malay name being recorded in Java by the Dutch physician Jacobus Bontius.

[13] Another Dutch anatomist, Peter Camper, dissected specimens from Central Africa and Southeast Asia in the 1770s, noting the differences between the African and Asian apes.

[18][19] Another 2017 genetic study suggests ancient gene flow (introgression) between 200,000 and 550,000 years ago from the bonobo into the ancestors of central and eastern chimpanzees.

[38] In exceptional cases, certain individuals may considerably exceed these measurements, standing over 168 cm (5 ft 6 in) on two legs and weighing up to 136 kg (300 lb) in captivity.

It prefers fruit above all other food, but it also eats leaves, leaf buds, seeds, blossoms, stems, pith, bark, and resin.

[60][61] A study in Budongo Forest, Uganda found that 64.5% of their feeding time concentrated on fruits (84.6% of which being ripe), particularly those from two species of Ficus, Maesopsis eminii, and Celtis gomphophylla.

Other mammalian prey include red-tailed monkeys, infant and juvenile yellow baboons, bush babies, blue duikers, bushbucks, and common warthogs.

[68] Jane Goodall documented many occasions within Gombe Stream National Park of chimpanzees and western red colobus monkeys ignoring each other despite close proximity.

This is due to the differences in environmental and dietary adaptations; human internal parasite species overlap more with omnivorous, savanna-dwelling baboons.

The chimpanzee is host to the louse species Pediculus schaeffi, a close relative of P. humanus, which infests human head and body hair.

[83] A 2017 study of gastrointestinal parasites of wild chimpanzees in degraded forest in Uganda found nine species of protozoa, five nematodes, one cestode, and one trematode.

[85][failed verification] Chimpanzees live in communities that typically range from around 15 to more than 150 members but spend most of their time traveling in small, temporary groups consisting of a few individuals.

[87] However, this unusual fission-fusion social structure, "in which portions of the parent group may on a regular basis separate from and then rejoin the rest,"[88] is highly variable in terms of which particular individual chimpanzees congregate at a given time.

[89][90] Males maintain and improve their social ranks by forming coalitions, which have been characterised as "exploitative" and based on an individual's influence in agonistic interactions.

[91] Being in a coalition allows males to dominate a third individual when they could not by themselves, as politically apt chimpanzees can exert power over aggressive interactions regardless of their rank.

[129] Chimpanzees also display signs of culture among groups, with the learning and transmission of variations in grooming, tool use and foraging techniques leading to localized traditions.

The chimpanzees further show an aptitude for eidetic memory, demonstrated in experiments in which the jumbled digits are flashed onto a computer screen for less than a quarter of a second.

Wolfgang Köhler, for instance, reported insightful behaviour in chimpanzees, but he likewise often observed that they experienced "special difficulty" in solving simple problems.

One early attempt by Allen and Beatrix Gardner in the 1960s involved spending 51 months teaching American Sign Language to a chimpanzee named Washoe.

[126] One involved a chimpanzee jokingly named Nim Chimpsky (in allusion to the theorist of language Noam Chomsky), trained by Herbert Terrace of Columbia University.

In the reanalysis, Terrace and Bever concluded that Nim's utterances could be explained merely as prompting on the part of the experimenters, as well as mistakes in reporting the data.

The Hemba masks have a smile that suggests drunken anger, insanity or horror and are worn during rituals at funerals, representing the "awful reality of death".

In contrast to the fictional depictions of other animals, such as dogs (as in Lassie), dolphins (Flipper), horses (The Black Stallion) or even other great apes (King Kong), chimpanzee characters and actions are rarely relevant to the plot.

[172] Chimpanzees including the female Ai have been studied at the Primate Research Institute of Kyoto University, Japan, formerly directed by Tetsuro Matsuzawa, since 1978.

Enos, the third primate to orbit Earth after Soviet cosmonauts Yuri Gagarin and Gherman Titov, flew on Mercury-Atlas 5 on 29 November of the same year.

[176] Other long-term studies begun in the 1960s include Adriaan Kortlandt's in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo and Toshisada Nishida's in Mahale Mountains National Park in Tanzania.

[177][178] Current understanding of the species' typical behaviours and social organisation has been formed largely from Goodall's ongoing 60-year Gombe research study.

Road building has caused habitat degradation and fragmentation of chimpanzee populations and may allow poachers more access to areas that had not been seriously affected by humans.