Chimpanzees, our closest living relatives, face a triple threat from hunting for bushmeat, respiratory disease transmission from humans, and accelerating habitat loss across equatorial Africa.
Chimpanzees are perhaps the wild animals whose welfare is most clearly analogous to human suffering. They experience fear, grief, and social pain in ways that parallel human experience. Chimps caught in snares suffer acute injury and the terror of confinement. Respiratory disease outbreaks in wild populations cause the same kind of suffering as respiratory illness in humans. Orphaned infants whose mothers are killed for bushmeat experience profound psychological trauma; studies of chimpanzee orphans show lasting behavioral abnormalities consistent with post-traumatic stress. The destruction of chimpanzee culture through population loss means the death of irreplaceable learned traditions.