Chimpanzees are diurnal, meaning they are active during the day. They spend most of their time in trees (arboreal), and their long arms and fingers give them the advantage of quickly swinging through the trees. They are comfortable walking terrestrially or on the ground. During the rainy season, they tend to spend more time in the canopy and travel more on ground during the dry season.  When terrestrial, they walk on all four limbs (quadrupedally), using their knuckles to support their weight. This ” knuckle-walking ” movement is the most efficient way to move on the ground because of their long arms, and they often can run in a bounding motion using this method. They can also walk upright on their legs (bipedally), but this is slower and more clumsy because their thigh bones do not angle out like humans’. 

Chimpanzees can live in large troops, but most of their activities and daily routines are done with smaller groups called parties. In most chimpanzee subspecies, the party males oversee territorial patrols and keep out intruders. Territories are defended by aggressive vocalizations, chasing, thrashing of vegetation, physical fighting, and even killings. Eastern chimps are famous for multi-year violent encounters and intergroup killings. Central chimpanzees are not recorded as having such long-term violent behaviors, even though there have been many instances of intergroup killings during short territorial disputes. Central chimpanzee intercommunity encounter rates are generally lower than other chimpanzee subspecies. Unlike Eastern chimpanzee troops, females and young Central chimpanzees sometimes participate in patrols and intergroup encounters. Having young offspring in the territorial patrols seems foolhardy because they are weaker and much more likely to get killed during encounters. This presence of the young on patrols may explain why encounter rates are low, as parties do not want to risk physical fights where the young are in danger of getting killed. When encounters occur in these communities, they are usually acoustic (yelling at each other) or visual aggressions without violence. 

Tool use has been well documented in Central chimpanzees. They often use sticks to dip into termite or ant nests, pull out the little insects, and eat them. This behavior is called dipping or fishing. Central chimpanzees sometimes carry multiple tools for between 33 feet and 230 feet (10 and 70 m) in preparation for ant-dipping opportunities. This amazing behavior suggests that chimpanzees have some planning capabilities, an initial part of complex problem-solving seen in humans. Mature chimpanzees transport tools more often than younger ones, suggesting they learn through experience. Many primates and birds have been documented as being able to manipulate or change another environmental condition using an external object. However, anticipating the need for tools, modifying existing tools, and teaching tools to others, like chimps, is considered a complex mental process unique to humans. 

Some Central chimpanzees select variations of an object in their environment that best suit their purpose and then modify these tools to make them more effective. For example, to eat termites from an above-ground termite nest, chimps use thinner herbaceous twigs to probe the natural exit holes. For underground termite nests, chimps use thicker branches to make a tunnel that reaches the nest before using sticks as probes. In either case, they chew on the end of the probe stick to make the ends more like a brush that can collect more insects in each scoop. The thicker woody sticks are more durable than the thin twigs, so they are often reused multiple times.

They also gather honey from beehives using sticks, often using longer sticks for bees with stingers and sturdy branches to break open hives of underground bees that do not have stingers. 

Tool use in chimps varies by community and region. For example, tortoise smashing is common in areas with more tortoises, while digging up underground bee nests is seen in other chip communities where they have learned to look for signs of these nests and dig them up to get grubs and honey. 

Chimpanzees learn through trial and error (experiential learning) and also from watching other chimps (social learning). Thus, a behavior such as ant-dipping or tortoise smashing is learned and passed on to the next generation of chimps within a community. Transferring these behaviors across regions occurs when chimps come together in their fission-fusion society or when females leave their natal group and join another party. Many scientists think this transference of behaviors along generations of chimpanzees indicates chimpanzee culture, similar to rituals in human cultures. 

All chimp species build smaller, rough nests for short daytime rests and more elaborate, comfortable nests for sleeping at night. Nighttime nests are made from bent branches shaped to a form base and then topped with soft ferns and leaves. These elaborate nests are commonly built in trees because they offer the most protection against predators. In general, ground nests are quickly constructed to rest during the day in between feeding bouts. Nighttime ground nesting or ground night nests are less common in Central chimpanzees than in other subspecies; only 4% of Central chimpanzee nests have been recorded as ground nests. They prefer ground night nesting in swamps during the dry season (when water levels are low and nesting sites are more available) because human hunters tend to avoid difficult-to-navigate swampy regions.  Researchers think that nesting may be an essential precursor to the evolution of human memory and cognition (ability to think). Sleeping in a safe and comfortable nest improves the length and quality of sleep. Deep sleep increases the release of hormones that establish memories and neuron (nerve cell) health. Therefore, nesting behavior that would have evolved among primates may have contributed to complex neural pathways found in modern primate brains. 

Chimpanzees were used in research for decades, and many of their behaviors have been studied under laboratory conditions. These laboratory studies help understand individual behaviors. However, they are challenging to apply to wild conditions where the environment, food availability, and presence of other animals significantly influence chimpanzee behavior. One interesting outcome of lab behavior research is understanding how chimpanzees use their gestures and eye contact to communicate across species, to humans specifically. Many studies have shown that chimpanzees use pointing and alternating gazing between objects and humans to communicate the object’s location to their human handlers. This behavior has also been noted in human babies, highlighting the common bases of language and contextual communications in humans and apes.