The intelligence of the chimpanzee is the most studied of all animal species. Based on the latest research, their genetic base coincides with the human by 98.7% Chimpanzees are so genetically close to humans that at one time it was even proposed to refer chimpanzees to the genus HUMANS.

Although chimpanzees cannot speak due to the structure of the vocal apparatus, they are able to communicate with their hands in the language of the deaf and dumb people (sign language). They are able to use words in a figurative sense, they can create new concepts by combining known words, for example: "lighter" - "match bottle", they have a sense of humor. The first chimpanzee was taught sign language in 1967, and by 1972, dozens of chimpanzees had been taught sign language. Other languages have also been devised to communicate with chimpanzees, such as the symbolic language and the lexigram language. Male Kanzi was able to learn to understand about 3000 English words by ear and actively use more than 500 words using a keyboard with lexigrams. A case is described when a female bonobo, trained in sign language, taught it to her cub herself.

These great apes are leaders in the use of tools. So, during observations of chimpanzees in the savannah in the southeast of Senegal, more than 20 cases of the use of 26 different tools by these animals, from stone hammers to sticks for picking out termites, were recorded.

But the most striking thing was to observe the manufacture and use of half-meter spears. Chimpanzees not only broke off branches of the required length and thickness, but also cleaned them of leaves and smaller branches, peeled off the bark, and even sometimes sharpened the tip of the tool with their teeth.

Anthropologists from the Universities of Iowa and Cambridge, during research in 2005-2006, first discovered how chimpanzees hunted other vertebrates with spears, and all this is strikingly reminiscent of the early steps of Homo sapiens on his path to becoming a dexterous hunter.

Just like orangutans, dolphins, elephants, chimpanzees are able to recognize themselves in the mirror, and not see another individual in it.

Another impressive example of the presence of intelligence in chimpanzees. When scientists challenged the monkeys to get a nut from the bottom of a firmly fixed plastic test tube, some of the monkeys (14 out of 43 individuals) guessed that if you take water from a tap into your mouth and spit it out into a narrow neck, the nut will rise to the surface. 7 chimpanzees brought this task to a victorious end and got to the nut. In addition to chimpanzees, researchers at the Uganda Monkey Sanctuary and the Leipzig Zoo have done similar experiments on gorillas. However, none of the gorillas managed to bring the nut to the surface by transferring water in their mouths from a faucet to a test tube.

Moreover, in this matter, chimpanzees turned out to be smarter than children. The scientists conducted the same experiment with several groups of children: 24 children of four years of age and the same number of children of six and eight years. Only instead of a tap, the children were given watering cans so that they would not have to carry water with their mouths. The results of four-year-old children were worse than those of chimpanzees: only two out of 24 coped with the task. The highest percentage of success, as expected, was in children of 8 years old: 14 out of 24.

However, we will not overestimate the abilities of these monkeys, although the genetic similarity between humans and chimpanzees is so great that it was even proposed to combine them into one genus Homo.