Do Chimpanzees Have Unions

Why do chimpanzees have big butts?

I presume that you mean the vaginal swellings on female chimps. Those are not their “butts.” It’s a swelling of their vagina when they are in estrous. Most humans find these swellings highly unattractive, but I assure you, male chimps love them! It’s a sign that the females are ready to mate. A lesser-known fact is that the swellings appear a bit before actual ovulation. You will often see high-ranking males sniffing at the swellings to determine whether it’s really time to mate a given female, or whether the swellings are still in the early stages.

Why do chimpanzees have such ugly butts?

Its the female chimpanzees of reproductive age that have the swollen pink/red butts, during their fertile phase.To adult male chimpanzees this is just about the most beautiful sight in their world,This common chimpanzee female sex swelling draws great fascination and admiration from her male friends. They don’t find it ugly at all. (img. Martin N. Muller)This may be why modern day Homo sapien men often have such a liking for ‘big butts’. It may go back to our pre-human ancestry.The swelling is actually the female chimpanzees vulva and it swells up and changes colour when she is fertile and looking to mate. A|t some point the human female vulva moved from the posterior to being hidden away between the legs. That is an interesting puzzle in itself. But in apes, the vulva is on their rear, visible, overt and when fertile, very swollen. Its also the case in many monkeys, like the baboon.This very fertile female baboon, with her very swollen and red rear-positioned vulva, is a beautiful sight to male baboons. Pre-human females may have once been the same, causing the modern male liking for big butts.No disrespect intended to this ingenius female. She clearly understands the mysterious anthropology of a large female posterior as a way of gaining status among men, and may have photoshopped one onto herself. But…. there is a reason men like big butts. Indeed maybe the female buttocks had to get bigger once the vulva was hidden away between the legs (possibly because of bipedalism). But the buttocks do not swell during fertile periods to my knowledge.

Why do chimpanzees have human hands?

This a little like asking why chimps have human eyes. They don’t. We have simlar hands because we are closely related. Our hands are adapted to grasping, and unlike chimps we are capable of a “precision grip” and opposing our thumb to each of the other finger tips on the hame hand. Chimps can’t do that. As an aside, “why” is not a scientific question per se. It implies some knowledge of causality. We can look at how we use our hands, and how a chimp uses its hands, and suggest why, in some specific instance, those hands are being employed in “thatway.” But that still doesn’t tell you anything about why you or a chimp can use your hands in some speific fashion. We believe that selectively chimps had hands that were best for keeping them from falling out of trees and breaking their necks, but that is speculation, not science.

Can a human and a chimpanzee have a baby?

No, chimpanzees and humans can’t interbreed. Even though we are extremely similar, genetically, we’ve had about 5 million years to evolve in separate directions. That means there are some significant differences between the way our genes are expressed, and even how they are organized within our chromosomes. For example, humans only have 23 pairs of chromosomes and chimpanzees have 24 pairs of chromosomes. At some point in the past 5 million years, either two chromosomes combined into one (in humans) or one chromosome broke apart into two (in chimps). That change alone would cause enormous problems for a human-chimp breeding pair.I’m not saying it would never be possible to create a human-chimp hybrid. I can imagine some sort of sci-fi scenario where scientists were able to manipulate the DNA of a chimp and a human to create a chimeric offspring that had both human and chimpanzee traits (but why would you??). But can a human and a chimp have a baby together? No, in a “Planet of the Apes” type situation, a chimp and a human are not going to be able to run off together and start a family of “humanzees”.

Why can't chimpanzees speak like humans?

Several reasons. First, understand that humans, like all other animals, DO have instincts. (And contrary to popular ideas, they generally obey them, too). One of the most critical human instincts when it comes to your question, is the instinct of humans to acquire and use language. Yes, that’s right - a child’s acquisition of language is INSTINCTIVE. If you talk around babies, they will learn to talk. You never need to encourage them - they simply need to be exposed to it, and they will pay attention and learn it.Chimpanzees lack that instinct. Chimps are VERY imitative. They’re imitative because the also lack another human instinct - the instinct to teach others. Chimps learn by observing each other, but they NEVER teach. So they’ve evolved to be very, VERY observant - otherwise, they wouldn’t learn what they need to. And chimpanzees can learn human languages, make no mistake about that. Replicating them, however - that’s a different story. Without the instinct to use language, they’re limited to merely understanding it… not utilizing it.Finally, another critical reason they can’t learn to speak, is that their vocal cords and tongue are not versatile enough for them to generate many of the sounds involved human speech. They’re simply not physically capable of producing the words.Bonobos, our actual closest relative among the great apes, may have more facility with language. There’s even been some suggestion that they have their own vocal language. But bonobo voices are even less like ours than a chimpanzee’s. Their voices are high-pitched, squeaky, and don’t have much range. They cannot replicate our language vocally.Again, it needs to be stressed that, although great apes cannot speak our languages, they CAN understand them, if they’ve been exposed to them sufficiently.

Could chimpanzees develop complex civilisation?

One of the largest barriers to chimpanzees is not “knowing” how to ask another chimp for help with something. Researchers had success teaching bonobos, a more docile species, that they could move an obstacle with a treat underneath only by asking another person or bonobo to help them pull it. It seemed to be implied that the reason they didn’t often want to ask for help was because they didn’t want to split the resulting reward with another ape.