How did interacting with humans impact chimpanzees?

Answer 1

In the long run, the impact was extremely negative. Humans have always had a morbid fascination with chimps because they are so like us. Chimps were taken from Africa and presented as gifts to the royals of Europe only a few hundred years ago. They have long been used in the entertainment industry; they are routinely beaten in order to make them perform. Although they are fed and provided medical care, they are confined to zoos far away from the jungle habitats where they were born. They were sent to medical research labs to be injected with all sorts of diseases and toxins when it was discovered that we share almost 99% of our DNA, making chimps perfect human analogs. They were a staple research tool during the 1980s when the AIDS epidemic was raging. Chimps were injected with HIV tainted blood in the hopes that they would develop symptoms. They would then be injected with various medicinal cocktails to see if it would affect the disease. It was later discovered that AIDS doesn't affect them the same way as it does humans, so millions of dollars were wasted by the government in this area of research. For more, see Next of Kin: My Conversations with Chimpanzees(1997) by Roger Fouts.