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60 free Chimpanzee trivia questions with answers — nature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This chimpanzee trivia quiz goes well beyond 'they share 99% of our DNA'. It covers chimp biology and behaviour: how their muscles outmatch ours, why they have 24 pairs of chromosomes to our 23, how a Taï hunting party divides into drivers, blockers, chasers and ambushers, what a pant-hoot is, and how the four-year Gombe Chimpanzee War unfolded. It also covers the chimps and people who made history: Jane Goodall and David Greybeard, Ham the astrochimp on Mercury-Redstone 2, Washoe and Nim Chimpsky in the sign-language wars, Ayumu beating humans at a memory test, Cheeta of the Tarzan films, Michael Jackson's Bubbles, and the London Zoo tea parties. Conservation questions cover the four subspecies and why the western chimpanzee is Critically Endangered. Every question was verified against a primary reference (mainly the Wikipedia article on the chimpanzee and the articles on the individual animals and researchers) and carries a citation. Pair it with our gorilla, orangutan and bonobo-flavoured primate questions for a full great-ape round.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is the chimpanzee's scientific name?
Pan troglodytes
Pan paniscus is the bonobo, the only other species in the genus; the two are humans' closest living relatives.
Q 02Which animal is the only other living species in the genus Pan alongside the chimpanzee?
The bonobo
It was long called the pygmy chimpanzee and was only recognised as a separate species in 1933.
Q 03A 1738 magazine glossed the word 'chimpanze' as meaning what in an Angolan language?
Mockman
Modern Vili, a Kongo language, has the comparable word ci-mpenzi; the short form 'chimp' dates from the late 1870s.
Q 04The chimpanzee's genus name Pan is taken from what?
A Greek god
The species name troglodytes comes from the Troglodytae, a mythical race of cave-dwellers.
Q 05How many extant great ape species are there in the family Hominidae, humans included?
Eight
Three orangutans, two gorillas, the chimpanzee, the bonobo and Homo sapiens.
Q 06Who coined the genus name Pan in 1816?
Lorenz Oken
Blumenbach had classified the chimp as Simia troglodytes by 1775; Oken also coined Panthera for the big cats the same year.
Q 07In which year was the 'pygmy chimpanzee' formally recognised as a species distinct from the chimpanzee?
1933
The two are thought to have split from each other close to 2 million years ago.
Q 08The only known Pan fossils, three teeth found in Kenya in 2005, date to roughly when?
500,000 years ago
They turned up in the same area as Homo fossils, showing chimps and humans shared the East African Rift in the Middle Pleistocene.
Q 09Chimpanzees and bonobos are estimated to have split from the human lineage how long ago?
7 to 10 million years
At least 24 hominin species are thought to have appeared on the human side since the split.
Q 10How many recognised chimpanzee subspecies are there?
Four
Central, western, Nigeria-Cameroon and eastern, with a fifth (southeastern) proposed by Colin Groves but not accepted by the IUCN.
Q 11How many pairs of chromosomes does a chimpanzee have?
24
Humans have 23 because two ancestral chromosomes fused into human chromosome 2.
Q 12The 2005 draft chimpanzee genome showed roughly what share of DNA sequences shared with humans?
Almost 99%
A fuller 2025 genome found the gap widens to 12-13% once insertions, deletions and non-coding material are counted.
Q 13How much do wild male chimpanzees weigh on average?
About 40 kg
Females average about 30 kg; captive individuals have reached 136 kg.
Q 14Chimpanzee muscles are roughly how much stronger per unit of weight than human muscles?
Q 21What kind of society do chimpanzee communities have, with groups constantly splitting and re-merging?
Fission-fusion
Communities can reach 200, but day-to-day parties are usually six or fewer.
Q 22In chimpanzee society, which sex usually leaves its birth community at adolescence?
Females
So the males in a community tend to be related to each other, and they patrol its borders in coalitions.
Q 23The Gombe Chimpanzee War, in which one faction wiped out another, ran over which years?
1974 to 1977
It began as a dominance struggle between two males and ended with the victim group's members dead or missing.
50%
The edge comes from a higher share of fast-twitch fibres, an adaptation for climbing and swinging.
Q 15The chimpanzee brain is roughly how much smaller than a human's?
66%
It still contains equivalents of Broca's and Wernicke's areas, the human language-processing regions.
Q 16Where do chimpanzees sleep at night?
In a fresh tree nest built each evening
Adults sleep alone; only infants and juveniles share their mother's nest.
Q 17A Budongo Forest study found chimpanzees spent what share of feeding time on fruit?
64.5%
Nearly 85% of that fruit was ripe; leaves took another 19% of feeding time.
Q 18Which monkey is the most common mammal prey of hunting chimpanzees?
The red colobus
Meat is a small part of the diet, and males eat far more of it than females.
Q 19A 2017 study put the average lifespan of Ngogo chimpanzees at nearly how many years?
33
That is inside the range for human hunter-gatherers; at Taï the average is only 13, and captives have passed 60.
Q 20Which big cat preys on chimpanzees, and is sometimes harassed and robbed of kills by them?
The leopard
Chimps have been recorded stealing leopard kills and even killing cubs; lions have taken at least four at Mahale.
Q 24How long is a chimpanzee's gestation?
Eight months
Infants are weaned at four to five years and reach adulthood at around 15.
Q 25What is the most common call made by adult chimpanzees?
The pant-hoot
It has four parts: soft hoos, a build-up, a screaming climax and a let-down; tonal barks are reserved for large snakes.
Q 26What is chimpanzee 'drumming'?
Beating hands and feet on tree trunks
They drum when travelling, displaying, begging and on spotting members of other communities.
Q 27At Taï, hunting chimpanzees take on which set of specialised roles?
Drivers, blockers, chasers and ambushers
When a monkey is caught, the meat is shared among the hunting party and even bystanders.
Q 28Ayumu, a chimpanzee at Kyoto University, out-performed human adults at what task?
Recalling briefly flashed numbers
The digits appeared for under a quarter of a second, and he tapped their positions in ascending order.
Q 29Why is chimpanzee laughter hard for humans to recognise?
It sounds like breathing and panting
It is produced by alternating inhalations and exhalations; chimps stay ticklish for life, especially in the armpits and belly.
Q 30Chimpanzees have used stone tools since at least how long ago?
4,300 years
Nearly every wild population uses tools of some kind, from termite-fishing twigs to leaf sponges.