It is a well-known fact that chimpanzees are our closest relatives in the mammalian world. Human and chimpanzee DNA is more than 90% identical, so it’s no surprise that chimpanzees are close to us physically and emotionally. They are quite intelligent and easily trained primates, capable of easily imitating human actions and emotions. You can endlessly talk about these special humanoid, but let’s still turn to examples of the extraordinary intelligence and human behavior of these animals.
Zoo in Southwest China, meet the 18-year-old chimpanzee Yuhui. According to the manager, Yuhui is a chimpanzee with very high mental abilities, which is quite capable of imitating human actions.
The primate enjoyed watching its keeper wash her clothes. The zoo worker wondered if Yuhui could repeat her actions with the wash. To satisfy her curiosity, the keeper placed a T-shirt, soap, and a brush next to a small pond.
And at one fine moment, Yuhui stunned, and pleasantly pleased his guardian, she found the primate doing the laundry. Yuhui washed the snow-white T-shirt with special diligence, remembering to thoroughly soap it, rinse it, then wring it out and put the clean T-shirt on the edge of the stone. This whole action lasted about half an hour, and it looks like the chimpanzee was enjoying the process.
Prior to that, another chimpanzee showed amazing mental abilities. She is also kept in one of the Chinese zoos, and she is also 18 years old. This is a female named Mei Su.
And as the staff of the zoo assure, the intellect of Mei Su is equal to the intellect of a three-year-old child. She opens a bottle of water, unscrewing the lid, and not biting off it, as some of her relatives do. And besides, the chimpanzee turned out to be clean, she regularly cleaned, sweeping her aviary with a broom, having spied this action from the zoo workers.
A study last year found that chimpanzees keep their sleeping quarters particularly clean, and in greater order, than many humans.
Cleanliness is the key to health, and even chimpanzees understand this. And some of us have a lot to learn from them.