Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

Hope. Love. Home. Sanctuary

Lunch conflict

by Anna

We never want to give the wrong impression to our followers that chimpanzees are always gentle and sweet. It’s much easier to take a video of the chimps playing than fighting, so our blog gets a bit skewed sometimes. The chimps do in fact spend most of their days grooming, napping, eating and playing with each other, but they also have regular disagreements and these disputes happen every day (sometimes multiple times a day). Here’s a short clip from today’s lunch. Warning! There is a lot of screaming in this video and some may find that difficult to watch, but no one was hurt.

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Comments

  1. Connie Buckley says

    Thanks for that reminder. No, I would not want to be on the receiving end of that degree of desputting111

  2. Connie Buckley says

    Thanks for the reminder. It is all to easy to get a sense of what cute, sweet creatures they are. I for one would not ever want to be the recipient of that degree of anger.

  3. Linda says

    Sweet Annie. sticking up for her friends! And with no one less than Jamie! The hand gestures make it look like someone’s talking politics in Itlay! What I wanna know is…did Jamie give it back?! Or did Missy go without chow!?

      • Linda says

        So then Missy is a little extra hungry tomorrow? (That protein keeps you full for a while 🙁 ) Also, this sounds lot like the “Chimp Politics” up in the greenhouse loft on Thanksgiving. Same deal? Same culprit?

  4. Cherie Erwin says

    Great show! You have a soap opera going on every day…maybe start streaming it??? I’d love to watch.

  5. June Ireland says

    Now THAT is an impressive and classy set of gesturing. Go Annie.
    And yes…thanks…a good “fair and balanced” reminder…and at least THEY forgive!
    Bless them all!

  6. Tobin says

    And, in any case, Annie was incomparably more articulate in expressing her political
    position than the malevolent human who presides over this grand republic is when
    he (repeatedly) denies the peril of climate change.

  8. Elaine Reininger says

    Wow, that was some dispute. Glad I wasn’t there. THought it was funny, your saying you cover your ears. I would too

  10. Carla René says

    Hi, Anna,

    I have to be honest. I don”t like chimp politics. I absolutely HATE it that the alphas think they are entitled to everything within the group; that they can simply take food that doesn’t belong to them. But for what? Do they actually provide protection like a bouncer at a bar when there’s a dispute? I know the alpha males in both captivity and the wild have first dibs at breeding females, but what about alpha females? In the wild, what perks do they enjoy, outside of stealing things that don’t belong to them?

    One other question. Have you ever seen a time when the overt and wild gesturing actually calmed Jamie down and made her stop what she was doing?

    Thanks.

    • Anna says

      Here’s a quote I found from the Jane Goodall Institute concerning wild chimps: “The alpha female isn’t as likely to obtain rule through aggression and violence as a male would be, but instead through relationships and personality. This isn’t to say that alpha females are devoid of aggression
they have shown that they sometimes use force when displeased by lower-ranking females. Higher ranking females will generally be more successful in reproducing and gaining access to food sources. Interestingly, the offspring of higher-ranking females tend to achieve a higher status themselves than chimps born to lower-ranking mothers.”

      I don’t think Annie’s gesturing is an attempt to calm things down, so much as warn her to not come any closer and show how mad she really is. It usually takes a while to calm the situation down after so much intense screaming.