I love Jamie. I love how smart and inquisitive she is. I love that sometimes she gets a glint in her eye and I just have to wonder what exactly she’s up to. I love that she likes to use tools, even to groom her caregivers or hunt snakes. I love that she makes quiet moaning sounds when she is doing something she really enjoys (here’s a really old video that demonstrates that). I love how she watches us not-so-clever humans set out food puzzles or after dinner treats, and as soon as we open the door to let the chimps in, she approaches the task like a well-rehearsed football play, usually getting the most treats while the other chimps randomly move through the area looking for goodies. I love that she sometimes chooses the complicated course of action. Like today – instead of mundanely walking across the playroom, she climbed up on the white industrial food container and used the caging of the windows and doors to pull herself around the perimeter of the room.
I love her intense love of boots. On Wednesday, I gave a presentation about the chimps to the Rotary Club of Yakima Sunrise. I dressed up more than I normally do and wore some boots that I don’t wear very often. When I returned home, I thought I should go up and see Jamie to show her my boots. She was thrilled. Even though I was wearing pants that covered them up, as soon as I walked in the building Jamie ran down the stairs to get a closer look. I pulled up my pant leg to show her the whole boot and she ran to the greenhouse, and then she ran onto Young’s Hill, even though it was pretty chilly outside. I ran all the way around Young’s Hill twice, with her cheating a little bit on her side by bypassing the top of the hill, but meeting me at the bottom again. And she closely inspected the boots when I was back in the human area of the greenhouse.
In yesterday’s blog post, J.B. revealed that Jamie knows a thing or two about throwing poop. And we’ve mentioned in the past about how Jamie is a pretty insecure leader.
I told J.B. today that I was thinking about writing a post about how complicated Jamie is, and he said, “do you mean moody?” I said, yes, but I was going to call it complicated.
Even though it’s not fun to have poop thrown at me, I do love that I never quite know what to expect from Jamie. She might be in a goofy stand on her head mood, or a play all day with Foxie mood, or a no one else is allowed to play mood, or an artistic mood, or a destroy something mood, or a cunning tool-using mood, or a grumpy put you in your place poop throwing mood (sorry, no previous blog post to link to for that one).
She’s not one-dimensional, that’s for sure.
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Diana / J.B. have you ever witnessed Jamie inflicting a “code brown” on any of her chimp family or only on us lowly humans.
We’ve never seen Jamie throw feces at another chimp. I think she’s fully aware that it is a very effective statement when directed at humans, but perhaps wouldn’t have the same impact towards her fellow chimpanzees. Because we are so careful and safe in our interactions with the chimps, she’s limited in what she can do to us humans. With the other chimps she can use direct physical threats. Or maybe there’s an entirely different explanation. We have seen Negra throw feces at another chimp during a fight. As someone pointed out yesterday, Negra seems like she just throws the nearest thing – her throwing is not as planned out to have maximum impact like Jamie’s.
I love how Jamie is always challenging everyone she knows (especially caregivers) to be better. And, of course, I love her fashion sense.
hmmm…she sounds a bit like all of us…complicated
I was most interested yesterday to read J.B,’s post that revealed Jamie to be a most insecure chimp. You could’ve knocked me over with a feather! I really have only closely followed the 7 for a little over a year, & don’t read posts and comments daily at that, so that aspect of her came as a complete surprise. I have been awed by Jamie’s intelligence and curiosity about how the world works more than once & still think she’d probably learn to crochet faster than I would 🙂 I can totally relate to her being described as “complicated” — and she’s a genius chimp that was locked up for 30 years. That’d do something to your self confidence wouldn’t it.
Moody… I’ll confess, that sounded like a hormonally influenced choice of adjective J.B. but I can’t explain that to you any more than I can my husband when he chooses the same adjective about me 🙂 but just take it from me, we females are waaayy complicated.
She’s amazing. So smart and observant. How often does she throw poop and do the other chimps ever do this as well?
Carissa, we were actually keeping a “poop log” for a while to see if we could track what might be influencing Jamie’s feces throwing. We didn’t see any obvious patterns. Sometimes she will go through periods where it’s a daily activity, or at least the threat of throwing feces is a daily activity (she’s mastered the poop-throwing “psych-out”), and then there will be weeks that go by without an incidents. We have seen Negra throw feces a couple of times, but it was more a reach for the closest thing available rather than a purposeful, directed action like Jamie’s is.
Poor Jamie, moody,perhaps.
A bit of a insecure BULLY type,,maybe, her actions do exhibit bully traits.
But,I often think and wonder, how they all would of been like today, minus the lives they spent in human homes, then shipped off to a lab and most likely forced, and beaten in to submission while entering her cell and cage.
In Jamie’s sad life story,, I can’t even imagine how her innate intelligence and strong will served her or how made it worse for her.
The very fact , Jamie survived being one of many prisoners , who lived in a single caged cell at a bio medical research lab. Her jailers,, did what ever they wanted to her,,hurt her, abused her, exploited her, breed ed her. stole all of her infant newborns , from her, I cant even imagine all the trickery used to manipulate her. Jamie went from a human home , where she was most likely treated as a human baby,spoiled,and doted over,
,then SOLD to life in labs, whatever the order was, my point is, Jamie, SURVIVED all of it, and moody,bully,insecure, Artist,comedian,,ALPHA, THE BOSS.bully,gentle,aggressive, is what they created .. I think she just has a very fragmented personality, contrived of many emotions, unresolved issues that she will never understand,,how can she,,even though they have AMAZING,comfortable,wonderful,well fed, well cared for lives,, the horrible exploits done unto Jamie ,, have affected her mind and her personality.. How could it not ,,? All of these seven chimps minds , lives and personalities, have been totally disturbed and effected by their horrid pasts. I’m just so relieved, they now have freedom to choose and to really truly live,,as they do,, They’ve all come so far,,as they all continue to excel , develop, learn about chimpanzee life and dynamics. Luckily, Jamie and the others receive the best care from a group of very dedicated , very educated pros who give their all to Jamie and her peers. The chimps have gone from a life of deprivations horrors to a life or having the best of everything, The quality of care they receive is what truly has given these chimps a new lease on life,, and I think Jamie knows it, she has it really, really GOOD. and that she get away doing as she pleases,
Well, if you cannot yell words in anger, the next best thing would be to throw poop. I’m sure that’s an expletive in chimp vocabulary.