The chimpanzee, scientifically known as Pan Troglodytes, is the animal kingdom's closest relative to humans. In fact, chimpanzees are more similar to man than they are other apes, and research indicates that chimpanzees are over 99 percent genetically identical to humans.

Chimpanzees are native to Equatorial Africa, and once roamed in their millions across 25 countries in West, Central and East Africa. But relentless poaching, logging, habitat destruction, and human encroachment have reduced the wild population to less than an estimated 150 000, and they are classified as an Endangered Species.

Sadly, only limited legislation exists in a few nations to protect them, and it is estimated that chimpanzees and Africa’s two other great apes – gorillas and bonobos – could cease to exist in the wild within the next 30-50 years.

Chimpanzees are social animals with strong family bonds. They live in large groups of 25 or more, and female chimpanzees are attentive mothers, often doting on their offspring for the first four or five years. Chimpanzees are also efficient hunters and tool makers, and exhibit many of the same emotions once thought exclusive to humans, such as jealousy, envy, compassion, greed, sloth, avarice, and malice.

Chimpanzees continue to be hunted down and poached in their hundreds each year. The illegal hunting and subsequent sale of primate meat -- known as "bushmeat" -- is a thriving commercial enterprise and is on the increase with the depletion of forests. Sadly, it is believed that the killer human viruses such as Ebola and AIDS are directly related to the consumption of this ape meat, yet the practice shows no signs of abating.

Chimpanzee babies who survive the hunting ordeal are often sold as pets, zoo animals, or circus performers, while some wind up in medical research.