Abstract

What is a chimpanzee? A trickier question than you might think. The name usually refers to members of a species designated Pan troglodytes and found in a broad but discontinuous distribution across equatorial Africa. Such 'common chimpanzees' are distinguished from their close relative the pygmy chimpanzee or bonobo (Pan paniscus), which lives only south of the Congo River in the current-day Democratic Republic of Congo. But for other taxa, genetic similarity as close as that between humans and chimpanzees leads routinely to classification in the same genus - adopting that logic would make us all chimpanzees, or all chimpanzees members of the genus Homo.