As you may well know, this sanctuary is chock full of personalities, and the more you get to know the chimpanzees and cattle, the more you appreciate each individual’s many sides.
First, I want to say how incredibly thankful we are for the donations that have been coming in for our year-end fundraising. At this moment we are 35% towards our goal!
Each and every donation is even more meaningful to us this year, and we are so appreciative of all of your support as we work towards the day when we will be telling you all about the personalities of the new six chimpanzees who we hope will be coming from Wildlife Waystation in 2021!
On with the show—
Personality exhibit #1: Betsy
Every once in a while when we go to hang out with the cattle, we discover Betsy has mud caked on all over her face. Our best guess is she dips her head into the soft banks of the creek on purpose. She’s the only one of the four who does this. She seems quite content with the mud, so maybe she’s on to some sort of mountain mud facial.
Personality exhibit #2: Jamie
Today Jamie decided to use the “foot box” as her own personal boot box.
She stored her boots in there for about a half hour, until she was ready to move to another part of the building, boots in hand.
Personality exhibit #3: Negra
Negra is continuing to construct over-the-top, really quite outrageous blanket nests. The photo below is the last view I had of her this evening before turning the lights out.
Looking at that photo above, and learning that Negra often pouts her lips through the caging to kiss her caregivers’ hands generally elicits the impression that Negra is a very sweet chimpanzee.
I’m not going to say that she’s not sweet; she certainly can be, but her personality really is more sharp than saccharine.
As we’ve mentioned before, she has a bit of a mafia boss relationship with Missy in particular. I witnessed this aspect of their relationship yesterday.
The chimpanzees were finishing up their breakfast and I was lucky enough to walk by the front rooms just at the right moment to see Missy attempting to pass Negra while carrying several pieces of primate chow. Negra whimpered and held out her hand. Missy paused just for a second and then proceeded to put all of the chow into Negra’s outstretched hand.
Now, if you didn’t know their individual personalities and just witnessed this moment, you might understandably surmise that Missy was being nice to Negra and her hand off was a moment of altruism. But, Missy also wouldn’t generally be described as “sweet” by those who know her well. Don’t get me wrong, she and Negra have very sweet moments together:
but Missy is a very politically shrewd chimpanzee.
Missy likes primate chow, but she doesn’t love it. So it’s not a bad deal for her to give up something that she may consider low value as a “pay off” to keep in good standing with Queen Negra. I would probably do the same thing myself.
