Chimps Quotes & Sayings

I would expect a significant development and elaboration of language in only a few generations if all the chimps unable to communicate were to die or fail to reproduce. Basic English corresponds to about 1,000 words. Chimpanzees are already accomplished in vocabularies exceeding 10 percent of that number. — Carl Sagan

Motupi was a five-year-old chimpanzee with severe anger-management issues. He had recently arrived at FunJungle, and while he behaved normally most of the time, every now and then he would have massive emotional eruptions. During these, he would tear up the landscaping, threaten the other chimps, and throw anything he could get his hands on - which was usually his own poop. FunJungle employees had started calling him Furious George. — Stuart Gibbs

Since the bigger gorillas leave chimps only a fraction of the quantity of food bonobos get, each chimp must fight ferociously to survive, including killing other chimpanzees — Eliot Schrefer

We have language and they do not. Chimps communicate by embracing, patting, looking - all these things. And they have lots of sounds. But they cannot sit and discuss. They cannot teach about things that are not present, as far as we know. — Jane Goodall

She gave me the jabs and said I was covered for every worst-case scenario, including being bitten by a dirty chimp. I told her this is why we have over-population problems. Why are idiots who annoy dirty chimps being protected? — Karl Pilkington

We're individuals bound by a pattern of reciprocal obligation," I said. "If a group of chimps in the Amazon can be called a family, I think the Varners qualify."
-Ella — Lisa Kleypas

Let's say intelligence is your ability to compose poetry, symphonies, do art, math and science. Chimps can't do any of that, yet we share 99 percent DNA. Everything that we are, that distinguishes us from chimps, emerges from that one-percent difference. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

The part that always shocked me was the inter-community violence among the chimps: the patrols and the vicious attacks on strangers that lead to death. It's an unfortunate parallel to human behavior - they have a dark side just as we do. We have less excuse, because we can deliberate, so I believe only we are capable of true calculated evil. — Jane Goodall

Moreover, not unlike presidential candidates who hold babies up in the air as soon as the cameras are rolling, male chimps vying for power develop a sudden interest in infants, which they hold and tickle in order — Frans De Waal

Learning from wolves to interact with pet dogs makes about as much sense as, 'I want to improve my parenting - let's see how the chimps do it!' — Ian Dunbar

When chimps threaten, they open their mouth and show their teeth. It's a little like waving a knife in front of you. It's very primitive, and therefore bizarre. — Helen Fisher

We, as humans, have actually developed a sense of social responsibility. We have gone beyond our basic instincts. We can and we do. This is what sets us apart from the chimps. They are extremely brutal and hostile. Your next door neighbor is to be killed unless she is a juicy young female, who hasn't yet had her first baby, in which case you want her. — Jane Goodall

Our close cousins the gorillas and orangs and chimps and gibbon apes have gotten along just fine all this time while eating raw vegetable matter, whereas we not only prepare hot meals but have now all but destroyed this once salubrious planet as a life-support system in fewer than two hundred years, mainly by making thermodynamic whoopee with fossil fuels. — Kurt Vonnegut

I had bought two male chimps from a primate colony in Holland. They lived next to each other in separate cages for several months before I used one as a [heart] donor. When we put him to sleep in his cage in preparation for the operation, he chattered and cried incessantly. We attached no significance to this, but it must have made a great impression on his companion, for when we removed the body to the operating room, the other chimp wept bitterly and was inconsolable for days. The incident made a deep impression on me. I vowed never again to experiment with such sensitive creatures. — Christiaan Barnard

Even chimps understand the concept - if a troop of chimps enters a fruit tree, they will only pick the fruits that are ripe and leave the others growing. That is sustainability. — Jane Goodall

It's the bond between mother and child, which is really, for us and for chimps and other primates, the root of all the expressions of social behavior. — Jane Goodall

I love dogs, not chimps. Some chimps are nice, and some are horrid. I don't actually think of them as animals any more than I think of us as animals, although both of us are. — Jane Goodall

Proponents of the "we're all one race," swill took another hit recently when scientists revealed that bananas share about 50% of the DNA of humans (I kid you not). This is 10% more than what we share with earthworms. Add this information to the previous revelation that humans and chimps are 98.4% the same genetically, and you begin to see the problem for the we're all one race crowd - our present ignorant flat worlders. The reason this is a hit for the all one race crackpots is because it is just a further indication that nature works with minor changes to make major differences. In fact, there are no "tiny" changes in nature at the DNA level of existence. Just a minor change here or there makes a totally different animal or plant. — H. Millard

I learned from my dog long before I went to Gombe that we weren't the only beings with personalities. What the chimps did was help me to persuade others. — Jane Goodall

People and gorillas, horses and duikers and pigs, monkeys and chimps and bats and viruses: We're all in this together. — David Quammen

I was even accused of teaching the chimps how to fish for termites which I mean that would have been such a brilliant coup. — Jane Goodall

Thus we do not yet have experience with the
adult language abilities of monkeys and apes. One of the most intriguing questions is whether a verbally accomplished chimpanzee mother will be able to communicate language to her offspring. It seems very likely that this should be possible and that a community of chimps initially competent in gestural
language could pass down the language to subsequent generations. — Carl Sagan

There is nothing uniquely human in the flicker of sentience that is commonly called consciousness. Dolphins delight in watching themselves in mirrors when they are having sex, while chimps react to the death of those they care for in much the same ways that humans do. It will be objected that these animals have no clear understanding of the kind of creature they are or what it means to die. In this regard too, however, they are no different from humans. — John N. Gray

The grin got bigger. Shadow found himself remembering a PBS show he had seen as a teenager, about chimpanzees. The show claimed that when apes and chimps smile it's only to bare their teeth in a grimace of hate or aggression or terror. When a chimp grins, it's a threat. This grin was one of those. — Neil Gaiman

Studying chimps, I came to the conclusion that being evil is something that only humans are capable of. A chimp would never plan to pull another's nails out. The chimps' way of aggression is quick and brutal. I compare them to gang attacks. — Jane Goodall

Chimps can do all sorts of things we thought that only we could do - like tool-making and abstraction and generalisation. They can learn a language - sign language - and they can use the signs. But when you think of our intellects, even the brightest chimp looks like a very small child. — Jane Goodall

Humans. Sometimes they make chimps look smart. — Katherine Applegate

No distinction in kind rather than degree between ourselves and the chimps? No distinction? Seriously, folks? Here is a simple operational test: the chimpanzees invariably are the one behind the bars of their cages. — David Berlinski

He's part of my family."
"You don't have a family, Ella."
Although I had made similar comments in the past, it rankled to hear him say it. "We're individuals bound by a pattern of reciprocal obligation," I said. "If a group of chimps in the Amazon can be called a family, I think the Varners qualify. — Lisa Kleypas

Chimps taught us we're not separated from the animal kingdom, we're a part of it. — Jane Goodall

Chimps cannot tell us anything about peaceful relations, because chimps have only different degrees of hostility between communities. Whereas bonobos do tell us something; they tell us about the possibility of having peaceful relationships. — Frans De Waal

You have to think if we've been visited by extraterrestrial life, it was like a zookeeper walking into the chimp enclosure: He looks around, takes some pictures, then leaves without interacting significantly with the environment. Meanwhile the chimps have no idea what the fuck just happened. — J. Richard Singleton

Chimps don't have language. Humans actively instruct others about how things should be done. Chimpanzees probably pick up cultural traditions by observation. — Frans De Waal

Because men, compared to male chimps, have such relatively small testicles (large testicles indicate a species where many males mate, one after the other, with the same female), we might guess that promiscuous societies were uncommon in the immediate human past. — Carl Sagan

[I don't get it. You guys look down on chimps for flinging their own poo but you think it's fine to fling other kinds of poo around? I mean, you get opposable thumbs and this is what you do with them?] — Kevin Hearne

Contrary to our metaphors, humans are much more imitative than the other apes. For example: if chimps watch a demonstration on how to get food out of a puzzle box, they, in their turn, skip any unnecessary steps, go straight to the treat. Human children overimitate, reproducing each step regardless of its necessity. There is some reason why, now that it's our behavior, being slavishly imitative is superior to being thoughtful and efficient, but I forget exactly what that reason is. — Karen Joy Fowler

Both bonobos and common chimps are as close to humans as foxes are to dogs. I don't know about you, but that's closer than I feel to some of my human relatives. — Susan Block

Until fairly recently it was thought that humans had
fortv-eight chromosomes in an ordinary somatic cell. We now know that the correct number is forty-six. Chimps apparently really do have forty-eight chromosomes, and in this case a viable cross of a chimpanzee and a human would in any event be rare. — Carl Sagan

Being both more systematically brutal than chimps and more empathetic than
bonobos, we are by far the most bipolar ape. Our societies are never completely peaceful, never completely competitive, never ruled by sheer selfishness, and never perfectly moral. — Frans De Waal

Chimps are very quick to have a sudden fight or aggressive episode, but they're equally as good at reconciliation. — Jane Goodall

Everyone knew that at some point in history, early humans got access to a big supply of protein, which allowed their brains to expand like a thirsty sponge in a bucket of water. Our brains kept growing until they were seven times larger than the brains of any comparable mammal. They also sucked up an ungodly number of calories; even though our brains account for only 2 percent of our body weight, they demand 20 percent of our energy, compared with just 9 percent for chimps. — Christopher McDougall

When I see David Attenborough talking about how chimps live, big apes, I just remember my dad and the way he'd look at you. He couldn't speak, but everything else about him was, 'This is us, a family.' Relationships are just as intense as they are for people who can speak. Probably more so. — Richard Griffiths

Empathy is also a natural human behavior, and natural to chimps as well. When we see someone hurt, our brains respond to some extent as if we'd been hurt ourselves. — Karen Joy Fowler

It was because the chimps are so eye-catching, so like us and teach us so much that my work was recognised worldwide. — Jane Goodall

The least I can do is speak out for the hundreds of chimpanzees who, right now, sit hunched, miserable and without hope, staring out with dead eyes from their metal prisons. They cannot speak for themselves. — Jane Goodall

[Director] Peter Wallerstein does great work rescuing sea life along the shores of LA, and I helped raise money for sanctuaries such as Chimp Haven, who are now taking in over two hundred medical lab chimps released from government-funded medical testing labs. — Alison Eastwood

Years later, my father made a passing reference to the uncanny-valley response - the human aversion to things that look almost but not quite like people. The uncanny-valley response is a hard thing to define, much less to test for. But if true, it explains why the faces of chimps so unsettle some of us. — Karen Joy Fowler

Another potentiality of our irrepressible juvenility is a capacity to maintain until the onset of senility an active creative interaction with our environment. We persist in exploring, investigating, inventing, discovering. In these respects humans of all eras, in all societies, all ages of life, are more like baby chimps and not at all like the sedate and rigidly conforming adult chimpanzee, who hasn't changed much since she was five or six years old. — Louise J. Kaplan

My family tree spreads wide as well. I am a great ape, and you are a great ape, and so are chimpanzees and orangutans and bonobos, all of us distant and distrustful cousins.
I know this is troubling.
I too find it hard to believe there is a connection across time and space, linking me to a race of ill-mannered clowns.
Chimps. There's no excuse for them. — Katherine Applegate

What chimps don't seem capable of understanding is the state of false belief. They don't have a theory of mind that accounts for actions driven by beliefs in conflict with reality. And really, who lacking that will ever be able to navigate the human world? — Karen Joy Fowler

A chimpanzee is not the same category as a capuchin - chimps are half-human. I need a chimp and his name is going to be Bertie. — Jonathan Dunne

Wrangham cites several studies indicating that in fact humans don't do well on raw food: they can't maintain their body weight, and half of the women on a raw-food regimen stop menstruating. Devotees of raw food rely heavily on juicers and blenders, because otherwise they would have to spend as much time chewing as the chimps do. It is difficult, if not impossible, to extract sufficient energy from unprocessed plant matter to power a body with such a big, hungry brain. — Michael Pollan

If the Japanese want to be taken seriously as world financial powers, they'd better quit using the same tailor as variety show chimps. — P. J. O'Rourke

Girls clamored for Caleb's attention like chimps on crack. He's got the banana that every girl wants, — Tarryn Fisher

If one compares the sequence of amino acids that go to form the protein haemoglobin, it becomes apparent that humans and chimps are identical and do not differ in a single site ... — Simon Conway Morris

There are a lot of obstacles in the way of our understanding animal intelligence - not the least being that we can't even agree whether nonhuman species are conscious. We accept that chimps and dolphins experience awareness; we like to think dogs and cats do. But what about mice and newts? What about a fly? Is anything going on there at all? — Jeffrey Kluger

But let us not forget that human love and compassion are equally deeply rooted in our primate heritage, and in this sphere too our sensibilities are of a higher order of magnitude than those of chimpanzees. — Jane Goodall

Components are how people solve problems above a modest scale; it's one thing that separates us from chimpanzees. We invented a way of solving problems by simply making it the other guy's problem. It's called specialization of labor, and it's as simple as that. That's how the humans differ from chimpanzees: they never invented that. They know how to make tools, they have a language, so for most of the obvious things there are no differences between chimps and humans. We discovered how to solve problems by making it the other guy's problem - through an economic system. — Brad Cox

The genes supply the motivation for warfare, [E. O.] Wilson is saying, in humans as they do in chimps, but people, blessed with the power of language, look for some objective cause of war. A society psychs itself up to go to war by agreeing that their neighbors have wronged them, whether by seizing property or failing to deliver on some promise. Religious leaders confirm that the local deity favors their cause and off go the troops. — Nicholas Wade

Animals are certainly more sophisticated than we used to think. And we shouldn't lump together animals as a group. Crows and chimps and dogs are all highly intelligent in very different ways. — Alison Gopnik

Our main difference from chimps and gorillas is that over the last 3 million years or so, we have been shaped less and less by nature, and more and more by culture. We have become experimental creatures of our own making. This experiment has never been tried before. And we, its unwitting authors, have never controlled it. The experiment is now moving very quickly and on a colossal scale. Since the early 1900s, the world's population has multiplied by four and its economy - a rough measure of the human load on nature - by more than forty. We have reached a stage where we must bring the experiment under rational control, and guard against present and potential dangers. It's entirely up to us. If we fail - if we blow up or degrade the biosphere so it can no longer sustain us - nature will merely shrug and conclude that letting apes run the laboratory was fun for a while but in the end a bad idea. — Ronald Wright

We share a common ancestor with chimps that is not shared by mandrills, we share a common ancestor with mandrills that is not shared by bushbabies, and on and on and on, to the ancestor we share with nematode worms that is not shared with oak trees. — Simon Barnes

At age three, if you have a still-growing brain, it's a human behavior. In chimps, by age three, the brain is formed over 90 percent. That's why they can cope with their environment very easily after birth - faster than us, anyway. But in humans, we continue to grow our brains. That's why we need care from our parents. — Zeresenay Alemseged

I met a few chimpanzees on my pilgrimages and I wasn't sure if they were just shrivelled-up villagers or chimps... — Jonathan Dunne

I never minded flying cheap. I always said to myself, 'Taking this flight saves enough money to rescue four dogs, or six cats, or will let me make a difference to the one woman saving chimps in Cameroon.' — Elayne Boosler

You might be shown the photos of the space chimps in their helmets, grinning from ear to ear, and you might feel an urge to tell the rest of your class that chimps grin like that only when they're frightened, that no amount of time among humans will change it. Those happy-looking space chimps in those pictures are frankly terrified and maybe you just barely stop yourself from saying so. — Karen Joy Fowler

The chimps love holidays - in fact Tatu actually anticipates them and asks about them. — Roger Fouts

To the question of whether sharing 96% of our genetic make-up with chimps makes us 96 percent chimp; we also share about 50% of our DNA with bananas - that does not make us half bananas! — Steve Jones

Chimps are unbelievably like us - in biological, non-verbal ways. They can be loving and compassionate and yet they have a dark side ... 98 per cent of our DNA is the same. The difference is that we have developed language - we can teach about things that aren't there, plan for the future, discuss, share ideas — Jane Goodall

I shouldn't have named the chimps. It wasn't scientific. I didn't know. I knew nothing. And worse sin of all was that I was ascribing to them emotions like happiness, sadness and so forth. — Jane Goodall

In what terms should we think of these beings, nonhuman yet possessing so very many human-like characteristics? How should we treat them? Surely we should treat them with the same consideration and kindness as we show to other humans; and as we recognize human rights, so too should we recognize the rights of the great apes? Yes. — Jane Goodall

Humans speak too much. They chatter like chimps, crowding the world with their noise even when they have nothing to say. — Katherine Applegate

One of the things we found out as we filmed with people who dealt with chimps, and with all animals, and it's really incredible, is their levels of intelligence that we don't recognize right away. — D. A. Pennebaker

In Tanzania, the chimps are isolated in a very tiny patch of forest. I flew over it 13 years ago and realized that, basically, all the trees had gone, that people all around the park are struggling to survive. It became very clear that there was no way to protect the chimps while the people were in this dire circumstance. — Jane Goodall

When you meet chimps you meet individual personalities. When a baby chimp looks at you it's just like a human baby. We have a responsibility to them. — Jane Goodall

You don't know whether chimps are going to kill you or kiss you. They're very open on some levels and much more evil in a certain way. — Tim Burton