She also possesses this rare swimming and diving ability. Suryia the orangutan was filmed in a private zoo in South Carolina. Some weeks later, the chimp began to swim on the surface of the water. “It was very surprising behavior for an animal that is thought to be very afraid of water,” Renato Bender explained. To prevent Cooper from drowning, the biologists stretched two ropes over the deepest part of the pool.Ĭooper became immediately interested in the ropes and, after a few minutes, he started diving into the 2-m-deep water to pick up objects on the bottom of the pool. “We were extremely surprised when the chimp Cooper dived repeatedly into a swimming pool in Missouri and seemed to feel very comfortable,” Renato Bender said. These primates – Cooper the chimp and Suryia the orangutan – were raised and cared for by humans and have learned to swim and to dive. Renato Bender from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg and Nicole Bender from the University of Bern have studied a chimpanzee and an orangutan in the United States. Some argued that this indicated a definitive difference between humans and apes: people enjoy the water and are able to learn to swim, while apes prefer to stay on dry land.

When apes ventured into deep water, they often drowned. Cooper the chimp was raised by humans and had learned to swim (Renato Bender / Nicole Bender).įor many years, zoos have used water moats to confine chimpanzees, gorillas or orangutans.

Orangutan vs chimpanzee