What can chimpanzees teach us about ourselves? A lot, says Craig Stanford, who’s spent three decades studying the lives of our closest cousins.

Humans share upwards of 98% of their DNA with the great apes — gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos and orangutans — and Stanford, a professor of biological sciences and anthropology, looks to the nonhuman primates for insights into human evolution and the origins of our behavior.

“People go to therapy to understand how their past influences their present and their future. I do something similar on a species scale,” says Stanford, who arrived at USC Dornsife in 1992 at the invitation of the renowned primatologist Jane Goodall, Distinguished Emeritus Professor of Anthropology and Occupational Science at USC.

While careful not to position the great apes as “under-evolved humans” — “They are their own species on their own evolutionary paths,” Stanford says — he notes that by studying them, we gain insights into both our ancestors’ lives and our own modern behavior.

“We turn to the great apes to get an angle from a living creature into what our ancestors might have been like, how they behaved and what they did with their lives — even simple things like how they moved,” says Stanford, who is also a research associate at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.

When Goodall first began publishing her work in the 1960s, the scientific establishment lambasted her for assigning chimps names like Fifi and Frodo. But chimps, as Goodall contended then and Stanford echoes today, have individual personas much as people do. Some are outgoing, trustworthy community members and innate leaders. Others are loners who prize status above all else.

“We recognize there’s a basic template of their emotional and psychological state that is very similar to ours in many ways,” Stanford says.

Social Animals

Consider social bonds among chimps. Living in communities, chimps learn to navigate diverse and distinct social relationships across the multiple decades of their lives. A high-ranking chimp, for example, might use its power to support a lower-ranking chimp in limited ways, but it probably wouldn’t throw its entire social capital behind a lower-tiered peer, something Stanford compares to the human political arena.

“We turn to the great apes to get an angle from a living creature into what our ancestors might have been like.”

The social interactions of chimps provide a window into our lives, delivering insight into everything from the social hierarchies taking shape on the playground to the teamwork pushing corporate success to the altruism shaping philanthropic giving.

And what about the great apes’ communication methods?

Little is known about early human communication because communication does not fossilize. But here again, the great apes offer us intriguing clues into a mysterious world. Bonobos, for instance, coordinate their vocal and gestural communication in ways similar to humans, a crucial component to their livelihood. PhD student Elizabeth Beachem, who is studying under Stanford, has spent her graduate years focusing exactly on this. These communication systems help the animals gain awareness of the world around them, make requests and send warnings.

“It’s not as sophisticated as humans, obviously, but nevertheless something we would call a language,” Stanford says.

Observant Learners

Like people, the great apes also lean in to their acquired problem-solving skills throughout life.

Often by watching others, chimps learn to make tools. They use sticks to fish for termites and rocks to crack open hard-shelled nuts. Observation, innovation and adaptability ensure nourishment, of course, but also drive self-preservation and quality of life. It is much the same in modern society, where few invent anything new, but rather pivot and reshape past successes to fuel future progress.

The great apes learn to navigate complex physical environments as well, coming to understand their habitat like a seasoned forest ranger. Leveraging their spatial memory, chimps travel miles to find one huge fig tree in the month it’s bearing fruit — or are at least smart enough to follow savvier chimps to the fig tree. It is another sign of the lifelong learning the great apes value, which then empowers calculated risk-taking and propels their overall well-being.

“When your survival relies on it, you must learn to adapt,” Stanford says.

It’s a lesson as true in the rainforests of Africa as it is in the boardrooms, classrooms and communities of modern human life.