World Chimpanzee Day 2024: Saving Our Endangered Cousins
humans unifying around our closest kin and reversing global warming
Greetings, my fellow great apes! 🦧🦍😃
Yes, that’s right, us humans are great apes, along with chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans. Thankfully, about 25-30 million years ago our primate group split from the Old World monkeys — otherwise we might have tails, and what a bother that would be!
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Today is World Chimpanzee Day because Dr. Jane Goodall, English primatologist and anthropologist (who turned 90 this year), began her research with the wild chimpanzees in Africa on July 14th, 1960.
The Jane Goodall Institute’s website reports that in 1900 an estimated one million chimpanzees lived in the wild, and today there are as few as 340,000. Thus, the Institute’s mission is to save the endangered chimpanzees from extinction.
Current research indicates that the common ancestor we share with chimpanzees lived between 10 and 7 million years ago. Genetically, chimpanzees are our closest living relatives: We share 99 percent of the same DNA! 😳
Chimpanzees are very intelligent, and, like us humans, they are self-aware. They can even recognize themselves in mirrors!
You can learn a few more basic facts about our chimpanzee cousins here: two-minute video by Britannica.
For those who want a deeper experience of these amazing beings, the 2012 Disneynature film, Chimpanzee (trailer), follows the true story of a young chimpanzee named Oscar, whose mother died unexpectedly during the filming, and what happened next was truly remarkable. This four-minute (spoiler) video inspired me to watch the movie: “Chimpanzee — Behind the Scenes.”
Contemplating our common origin, not only as humans, but as part of the family of great apes, can help to unify us so we can work together to solve the dire issues of the Raging Twenties, such as saving the chimpanzees and reversing global warming.
In the 2017 book, Drawdown, edited by Paul Hawken, he shared part of Pope Francis’ “On Care for Our Common Home” (2015). Here are a few excerpts which nicely encapsulate a path to human unification:
“It cannot be emphasized enough how everything is interconnected. Time and space are not independent of one another, and not even atoms or subatomic particles can be considered in isolation. Just as the different aspects of the planet — physical, chemical and biological — are interrelated, so too living species are part of a network…. A good part of our genetic code is shared by many living beings.
"It follows that the fragmentation of knowledge and the isolation of bits of information can actually become a form of ignorance, unless they are integrated into a broader vision of reality…. Nature cannot be regarded as something separate from ourselves or as a mere setting in which we live. We are part of nature…. We lack an awareness of our common origin, of our mutual belonging…. This basic awareness would enable the development of new convictions, attitudes and forms of life.”
Yes, we are part of nature. Let us feel just how family we are with the other great apes.
With deep love for our chimpanzee cousins,
Teja Ray
🦧🦍❤️🔥❤️🦧🦍❤️🔥☀️❤️🦧🦍❤️🔥❤️🦧🦍
Sources ~
~ Evolution: The Human Story, Second Edition, by Dr. Alice Roberts
~ World Chimpanzee Day website
~ Jane Goodall Institute website
~ Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming, Edited by Paul Hawken
Despite things seeming a tad hopeless — like wars will never end, like humans will never stop killing animals, like fascists are going to take over the world, and like the planet will be too hot for humans in less than 4-5 years — I decided to keep trying to contribute to goodness and happiness in this world by publishing this essay today.
#WorldChimpanzeeDay
🦧🦍❤️🔥❤️🦧🦍❤️🔥☀️❤️🦧🦍❤️🔥❤️🦧🦍