Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

Hope. Love. Home. Sanctuary

Archives for January 2011

Distractions

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I’m going to be honest: Sometimes it’s just more fun to watch the chimpanzees play than it is to scrub the playroom. JB and I had a hard time making any significant progress this morning because the chimps were on fire (figuratively speaking)! We had some serious sun today, and relatively mild temperatures, which meant the greenhouse was warm and inviting. Foxie, Missy, and a troll doll had a lengthy play session on and around one of the window ledges; I’ll do my best to post that footage tomorrow.

For now, here’s a video of Annie reprising her stand-on-Missy game from this past summer (see that video here).

x-mas tree forage

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Today volunteer Kim brought over a discarded tree from her friend Michelle. Kim “decorated” the tree with food for lunch. Later, volunteer Pam came and told me about a Swedish holiday called St. Knut’s (or Canute’s). It was on January 13th. It seems the chimps celebrated it well, though a bit late…

christmas tree for forage

Adopt a Caregiver

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Hi all! I’m excited to be working my way back into the land of chimpanzees and the blog! 

I have a new “adopt a caregiver” request. Who wants to adopt JB? He’s been quite literally shivering his way through various projects in the garage/”shop.” The most exciting projects are welding – he just completed a welding course so that he can make benches and other good stuff for the chimps. So he really needs a shop heater. I guarantee whoever sends him the garage heater from our  Amazon wishlist (or you can send a donation to cover its purchase) will get a very happy thank you from the man himself. Thanks! (UPDATE 1/18/2011: JB HAS OFFICIALLY BEEN ADOPTED. THANKS BARB!)

Jamie and choices

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While going though blog posts the last couple of weeks, I was struck by what I wrote about Jamie after meeting her for the first time. This was written three years ago, almost six months before she came to Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest. This is what I wrote (link to the original post here):

Jamie is someone who could be referred to as a “character.” She clearly likes attention and demanded a lot of it from me and the other Direct Care Committee members (J.B. and Sarah) who accompanied me on my first visit to Buckshire to meet the chimpanzees. Jamie was the most gregarious of the group and was full of energy. She was clearly pleased to have the rapt attention of new people and really enjoyed having her feet tickled (with newspaper) and playing chase.

The first physical feature that I noticed about Jamie was that her belly had almost no hair. This was obviously due to “over-grooming” – Jamie picks out the hair on her belly and the skin underneath the hair. Over-grooming is considered a form of self-mutilation and can be the result of a stressful, unpredictable life or a sign of utter boredom. Often, this type of behavior gradually disappears when a chimpanzee is moved to a sanctuary which provides a stimulating environment.

A big element that is missing from the day-to-day life of the chimpanzees at Buckshire is the lack of choice. Born into captivity, Jamie’s entire life has been determined by the humans who claimed ownership over her. Her early years were spent as a “performer” in a circus, and then she was passed on to the biomedical research industry (note: we now know she lived with an animal trainer for nine years, but we don’t know how or where she was used during that time). There are very few opportunities to make choices in her daily existence at Buckshire. For Jamie, I believe this will be the biggest benefit to her new life at CSNW. I imagine that once she figures out there are so many things that she can do and ask for, she will probably be quite demanding of the time and energy of the staff at the sanctuary. And they will, no doubt, be elated to indulge her desires.

Jamie did, in fact, completely stop plucking the hair from her belly when she arrived at the sanctuary. She began to do it again this summer after an illness, though it was much, much less severe than before and not very noticeable (nothing like this photo of her bare belly when she arrived). Sometimes this happens with stereotypical behavior – it returns even though the environment has vastly improved. Hair plucking / over-grooming is a really common behavior in captive chimpanzees. We’re keeping an eye on Jamie and making sure she has things to do, which is partly why we started the “enhanced enrichment” in the evenings.

What really struck me about the post, though, was the last two sentences. Did I call that one, or what?? Jamie is by far the most demanding chimpanzee at the sanctuary. A lot of what we do to enrich the lives of the chimps is with Jamie in mind. And I do love to indulge her curiosity and need for stimulation. Just tonight she saw me bringing in some boots to put away and motioned for me. I stopped and lined up all of the boots in front of the caging. She nodded with appreciation in her Jamie way, then indicated that she wanted one, so I gave it to her. Then she wanted another, so I gave her a second boot. In the end, she was satisfied with four boots, but probably more satisfied with the interaction and the process of asking and receiving.

Missy up close

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Here are a few more photos – all of these of Missy – taken with the combo new camera and “Kathy lens” which produced the photos of Jamie last week. Missy REALLY likes to eat snow, so much so that she will eat it all day long and will sometimes shiver as though she’s lowered her body temperature. She’s pretty active, though, and a game of chase gets her body warmed right up.

missy self groom close up

missy gaze with snow

missy eating snow

Jody, the blanket hog

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Yesterday after playroom cleaning, instead of distributing the clean blankets around the room, we put most of them in a big pile. We figured that the chimpanzees would stop by the heap, take what they needed to build their nests, and move on. Jody, though, had different ideas. She made a beeline for the blanket mountain and immediately went to work.

Imaginary play

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This morning, while Elizabeth and I were cleaning the playroom, Annie was sitting in the window. She playfully opened her mouth for a “drink of water” through the glass. She’s not the only chimpanzee at CSNW that we have witnessed play this game. We caught a short clip of it:

This reminded me of something I saw, but failed to get on camera a few weeks ago. Jamie was sitting on this small toy horse and scooting along the playroom floor. She then lifted her leg up high and over in an exaggerated dismount. Two things stood out to me- the first was how interesting it is to me that chimps engage in this type of pretend play, and second- how truly little we know about the chimps’ histories. She seemed to know exactly what she was doing when she “dismounted”. We suspect she was a “pet” prior to the lab, but was she raised by a cowboy (hence the boot obsession?), did she just see this on TV?, or was she taught to ride a horse at some point? We may never know, but it was a fascinating moment none the less.

Here’s a photo of the horse, for scale. 🙂