Graceful viewers, welcome to Animal World: Our Co-Inhabitants. Today's show is the first in a two-part series where we explore the intelligence of chimpanzees and their sophisticated social structures with Dr. Tetsuro Matsuzawa, director of Kyoto University's Primate Research Institute in Inuyama City, Japan.

He has spent over three decades studying wild chimpanzees and made significant discoveries regarding their abilities and skills. He has published many books and papers based on his findings. Dr. Matsuzawa is also known for pioneering a new field of research called 『comparative cognitive science』 which involves studying chimpanzees for clues as to how human intelligence and behavior evolved over time. 

Dr. Tetsuro Matsuzawa (m): The chimpanzee is the most intimate being, and can be called an evolutionary neighbor for a man. If we can understand a chimpanzee well, we can also understand animals other than human beings.

HOST: For his important research work on chimpanzees, Dr. Matsuzawa received the Prince Chichibu Memorial Science Award in １９９１, the Jane Goodall Award in ２００１, and the Medal with a Purple Ribbon from the Japanese government in ２００４. Let us now learn more about his study of these primates in Africa.

Supreme Master TV (f): We hear that you go to Africa every year. And you are also studying the social behavior of wild chimpanzees. First of all, please explain to us their family structure and how they live in the forests.

Dr. Tetsuro Matsuzawa (m): Chimpanzees live only in Africa. They exist nowhere else but the equatorial forests of Africa and areas of savanna surrounded by these forests. Their habitats are distributed widely from Tanzania in the east to Guinea or Senegal in the west. Their family or their society is mostly made up of tens of chimpanzees or sometimes over a hundred. So they live together in groups. The group consists of multiple male and female adult chimpanzees, and of course their children.

Male baby chimpanzees stay among the group all their lives. But female chimpanzees leave the group or transfer to the next or nearby group whenever they reach adulthood or enter puberty and are ready to give birth. We call it a paternal society meaning a society built on fathers.

For more details on Dr. Matsuzawa, please visit www.PRI.kyoto-u.ac.jp