Chimpanzee Research Paper

Chimpanzees belong to the order of primates. Chimpanzee social groups are complex; therefore, they have their own lexicons to use within the group, they have their own political systems, and are patriarchal in nature. Chimpanzees can form alliances to overthrow the current alpha male. The alpha, to maintain control over his group, must maintain an alliance with the females of his group, and perform displays of power to henceforth establish dominance. Such a display can include vocalizations, stomping, and swinging around branches followed by charging another chimpanzee, usually a lower ranking chimpanzee, and slapping him across the back. In addition, chimpanzees are haplorrhines, which means that at the cost of their sense of smell, they …show more content…
Cindy was to be a pet for the man who bought her. He would dress her up and photograph her, he would play with her, talk to her, and teach her to do tricks. The man would try to raise Cindy as a human child. Cindy was also trained to do certain gestures in order to get what she wanted, she would tap the top of her head for food, and she would fold out her bottom lip whenever she wanted a drink, as Andrew Halloran details in his book “The Song of the Ape”. These gestures had become a part of Cindy’s culture, they are behaviors that she learned in order to survive her environment, and in her environment communication with her owner became necessary. Later, Cindy became more chimp-like and uncontrollable as she grew. Halloran explains that Cindy has innate chimpanzee behavior that cannot be suppressed by teaching her human behavior. Cindy’s stay at her owner’s home was coming close to its end for reasons unknown; However, Halloran speculates a story where Cindy’s owner awakens and had forgotten to put Cindy in her cage, he then finds that the refrigerator had been raided and that the kitchen is in a state of complete turmoil. The man follows the trail of disorder to the garage where he finds Cindy covered in oil and playing with a hammer. When the man goes to pick Cindy up to put her in her cage, she bites him. Later, the man puts her …show more content…
Chimpanzees pass down and spread behaviors and their lexicons to other chimps, integrating with the other chimps. Cindy had learned a raspberry vocalization, tapping the top of her head, and folding out her bottom lip as ways to communicate before coming to the animal park. This is what was unique to Cindy and it is what she introduced. Luckily, Cindy was able to meet other chimps before the end of her critical period, so she was able to learn how to communicate and behave like a chimp. The communication and mannerisms that she learned were essential for her survival because chimpanzees are naturally social, she needed to be able to communicate with others of her kind. Cindy learned to groom others, play with others, and communicate with others, this helped Cindy fit into a social group. Without this she would have been an

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