Of course you can belief what you want. However Chimps are very much alive, every bit as animate as we are. In fact all living organisms are equidistant from our inanimate beginnings. Even the lowly Amoeba dubia with a genome length of 670,000,000,000 bp, Amoeba proteus with 290,000,000,000bp, or the Stalked Adder's Tongue ( Ophioglossum petiolatum ) which has 160,000,000,000bp are quite alive and animate.
It is nice of you to acknowledge our inanimate pre-life and protolife precursors.
Inanimate, as used in the context of my post, was meant as in souless NOT as in lifeless.