Species profile
Pan troglodytes
Chimpanzee
EN · Endangered — Endangered — very high risk of extinction in the wild
About this species
Chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) is part of the curated SpeciesWatch catalogue and is classified as Endangered. Chimpanzees share about 98.7% of their DNA with humans, and different communities have distinct cultures — unique tool sets learned from each other, not inherited. Its recorded population direction is decreasing, so the category needs to be read alongside continuing losses of individuals or local populations.
Habitat, behaviour and ecological role
This profile associates the species with terrestrial, forest. These labels summarise environments used during different stages of its life rather than drawing an exact range boundary. Chimps fish for termites with twigs, crack nuts with stone hammers and sharpen sticks into spears — some tool traditions are thousands of years old. Its anatomy and behaviour are responses to those environments, while movement can connect distant places requiring different forms of management.
Why this species is at risk
Chimpanzees greet each other with hugs and kisses, share meat after hunts, and have been observed comforting the losers of conflicts — empathy in action. The catalogue records 3 principal pressures for this profile: Deforestation, Poaching, Disease. They should not be treated as isolated causes. Habitat change, exploitation, pollution, disease and climate stress can reinforce one another, while the importance of each pressure varies between regions and through time.
Conservation outlook
Protecting and reconnecting habitat is a priority, together with infrastructure planning that keeps feeding, breeding or migration routes functional. Direct protection needs to combine enforcement with conflict prevention, demand reduction and local benefits that make coexistence viable. Biosecurity, health surveillance and careful management of small populations help contain risks that can spread rapidly. Actions need long-term monitoring and revision as evidence changes; a positive intervention in one place does not by itself represent recovery across the species.
Editorial review: 2026-08-21
Threat factors
Known occurrences
Dots are georeferenced occurrence records from OBIS (marine) and GBIF (global), not individual animals and not a complete range map. Up to 500 recent API results are cached; the profile renders at most 500 points.
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Listen to this species
Bekomi, Lekoko, Haut-Ogooué · 0:08 · https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/