With all apologies to our east coast friends, the weather here is gorgeous! Perfect for a lunch forage on the hill today.
Volunteer Lynn decided to fancy things up by making sweet potato stuffed bell peppers, which she, Patti, and Amanda spread on the hill, along with beets and chow for the chimpanzees to find.
Before I forget – today is the last day to purchase Jody label wine from Northwest Cellars, so you should get on that now.
After making your wine purchase, enjoy the photo series below: portraits with mouths full
Though this is a fairly lighthearted photo series, foraging is serious business for chimpanzees. It’s their main job in the wild, making it pretty hard-wired, so searching for food is mentally stimulating and very enjoyable to chimpanzees in captivity.
There was one recent behavioral research study of chimpanzees in the wild that showed chimpanzees use long-term memory (as opposed to merely visual or olfactory cues) to find trees with the largest amount of fruit across fruiting seasons.
I posted a couple of additional photos from today’s forage on Jody’s and Burrito’s respective Facebook pages that illustrate how the Cle Elum Seven also use their long-term memory to check for the spots on the hill where they have previously found food. We humans are a predictable species and the chimps probably have us completely figured out.
In any case, here are a few photos of some of the chimpanzees enjoying the “fruits” of their foraging labor:
Missy:
Jamie:
Jody:
I bet you can guess who:
Love that Foxie!
me too!
Are their fruit trees on the hill? If no, why not?
There are no fruit trees on the hill. The hill was a bare pasture prior to its transformation into a chimpanzee habitat, and we didn’t have the years it would take to establish trees. The chimps would have likely destroyed young fruit trees, and older trees are pretty expensive and also would have been likely to be either destroyed or not able to survive transplant.
The bamboo on the hill has been the perfect vegetation to start because it transplants easily, it’s hardy (thanks to Provitro we were able to get species that survive the winter), and the chimps can use it for food, for nesting, for climbing, and for shade. In the future we might be able to experiment with other plants and trees, though!
Probably because they would have to take care of it all. It can be a drag here in WA. It’s a good idea though. There is not enough sun to have any fruit trees in mass on this side of the mountain. I wish there was.
Foxie is a joy!