This photo seems to almost haunt me, usually it's quite easy to think of something to say about a photo but this portrait of a chimpanzee deserves more than an easy description. I feel privileged to have been afforded the chance to make the photograph; and voyeuristic, as though I took a picture of a homeless person or a prisoner. The piercing eye contact is quite powerful.
In a way, the chimpanzee is both: its native habitat is disappearing and it is housed in a zoo, in Japan, 1000s of km from its home range. Whether this chimpanzee was born in captivity or not, I do not know.
This chimpanzee was waiting in a small room like enclosure which had a few things to climb on, the enclosure was titled as some sort of classroom so I think it was for the mental stimulation and exercise of the chimpanzees that were at the zoo. There wasn't any activity happening when I took the photo. Perhaps, the zoo staff were preparing for the activity or had recently finished. At the moment of taking these pictures this chimpanzee was sitting down looking at the visitors of the zoo and at the other chimpanzees in the nearby, more open enclosure.
Behind that face is a mind very similar to our own. I know I've looked at my hand in much the same way when bored and waiting.
Chimpanzees are adept at solving problems. They communicate their culture (they've been documented teaching other chimpanzees to use sticks to extract termites from logs, and techniques for doing similar things differ from troop to troop); they are able to learn from human beings too.
Chimpanzees are, after all, our closest living relatives and share 98.8% of the same DNA. They are intelligent, complex creatures.
Chimpanzees are an endangered species due to habitat loss and hunting by humans, without conservation efforts they might already be extinct, with them hopefully, they can make a recovery, however their population is still decreasing.
Two of the other chimpanzees were sleeping on a platform, very much the same way we would in the afternoon.
More information about Chimpanzees on wikipedia