Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

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Archives for January 2022

Let’s Talk About Enrichment

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Taking care of chimpanzees is more than cleaning enclosures and serving them meals. There’s a lot more that goes into it. We also ensure the chimpanzees are well mentally. This is usually through the form of enrichment. Enrichment is a way to provide mental stimulation and promote natural behaviors. In layman’s terms, enrichment is a way to try to curb boredom. When animals become bored, some abnormal or stressed-related behaviors can start to develop.

Here, we try very hard to keep all 16 residents enriched to the best of our abilities. But what does that look like? Traditionally in the animal care field, enrichment comes in a few staple categories:

  • Cognitive
  • Physical Habitat
  • Social
  • Food
  • Sensory

Cognitive enrichment is the form of enrichment you have seen here many times. These are the food puzzles the chimpanzees get throughout the day. These are the toys some interact with. This is a way for the chimpanzees problem solve and give them a level of control of their environment. With the food puzzles, its a way to problem solve a situation in order to achieve the reward.

Willy B engaging with a Hanging Frisbee puzzle. Between each Frisbee is a smear of peanut butter. This puzzle makes Willy B engage with the Frisbees by searching through the stacks for the peanut butter.
Foxie strategizing how to extract the peanuts in the Boomer Ball. Each chimpanzee has their own way of extracting the peanuts from these. Some shake them until the peanuts eventually fall out. Some try to fish them out with a tool. While some, like Foxie, tries to dig them out with her fingers.
Jamie wearing a Troll Scarf. We never tell the chimpanzees how to interact with their enrichment or tell them to wear clothes. That would defeat the purpose of sanctuary. With Troll Scarves though, Jamie usually likes to wear them around.
Burrito plays with a giant orange ball. Burrito particularly loves rolling these around and making as much noise as possible with them.

Physical Habitat is the how the enclosure is set up. Not only should an enclosure probably look visible appealing for the chimpanzees, but it should be functional as well. Young’s Hill has a plethora of structures the chimpanzees can climb, swing, and sit on to look out on to the surrounding areas. In the indoor enclosures, firehose is a great addition to their physical habitat.

Lucky is a big fan of lounging around or sitting on the firehose when she is inside.

In the two new playrooms and greenhouses currently occupied by Willy B’s group and Cy’s group, there are two artificial trees the chimpanzees can climb up and relax on their platforms.

Terry right before he began his ascension up the artificial tree in his greenhouse.
Honey B and Mave grooming on the “leaf” platforms of the artificial tree in their playroom.

Social enrichment is the relationship the chimpanzees have with others, chimpanzees and humans. It can be enriching to interact with a chimpanzee from another group, even if it is just through the window.

Jamie and Burrito watching Honey B’s group in the outdoor Chute.

As you know, we have been in the process of integrating Cy and Willy B’s group into one. Though these times can be stressful, seeing some of the chimpanzees come together and form bonds is the most heartwarming feeling a caregiver can get.

Dora being play dragged by Honey B.
Cy and Willy B grooming during one of their one-on-one meetings. Willy B and Cy became fast friends and always seek each other out. Just yesterday we were serving dinner and Cy and Willy B were both unusually absent. I went to find them, and found them at the new window to each other in the Greenhouses.

Food can be exciting and enriching, but food on it’s own is just something you eat to satisfy an empty belly. What can make food more enriching is introducing new foods or presenting it in new ways. We are continuously trying to find new foods to introduce to the chimpanzees. We also try to present the food in different ways. Besides hand serving we also set up forages. Typically when the weather is nice, we set up forages on Young’s Hill. This promotes a chimpanzee’s natural behavior to move around and search for their food.

Jamie grabs all that she can as she searches Young’s Hill for food.

Another type of forage presented in an exciting way is the parties we throw.

Here are some photos from 2021 Jamieween!
Shrunken apple heads!
The pomegranate-o-lanterns from 2020!

Sensory enrichment includes those which allow the chimpanzees to utilize their sense of touch, smell, auditory, and vision. We try to provide them with novel ways to utilize these senses.

One of the touch enrichment we use is play sand. Here you can see an imprint of Honey B’s foot in the sand box. Every so often, we would see Honey B, Jamie, and some of the others just grab a handful of sand and let it sift through their fingers.

As some know, Willy B loves screen time. This is one way we provide him with both a visual and auditory enrichment.

Caregiver Sam showing Willy B some videos of orangutans a few months ago. He really seems to love watching videos of orangutans.
While Sam showed Willy B some videos, I showed Honey B and Mave some videos of our friends at Center for Great Apes.
These photos were courtesy of caregiver Sofia.

Is everything we do a hit? No. Is what is good for one group good for the other? No. Do we continuously try to find ways to ensure every chimpanzee is enriched based on their personal preference and likes? Absolutely! Though this can be a very challenging task to cater enrichment for 16 very different personalities and likes, it is absolutely worth it. It is part of the job I personally love.

Here are some bonus photos I took of Rayne today:

And Dora!

Work Hard, Display Hard

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Originally, I planned on writing a blog post for today by following my classic recipe of egregiously bad puns, unnecessary history/science lessons, and some recent photographs of the sanctuary and its residents. In particular, I was going to share a series of images that would convey to everyone just how much snow we have piled around us after “Snomageddon” (and how hard we’re working to keep our paths and entrances clear). I’ve still included those photos here, but Willy B actually stole today’s blog with some mischievous behavior.

Before I elaborate on Willy’s exploits, I’ll have to provide a little context. In the newer wing of the Chimp House, the two former Wildlife Waystation groups reside in two sets of enclosures that essentially mirror each other; this layout enables each group to have access to a playroom, greenhouse, and either the mezzanine or front rooms for most of the day. We try to briefly close the chimps out of each area for daily cleaning, sometimes requiring us to play a weird version of Rush Hour to get things done. Lately, I’ve been experimenting with different strategies when I’m responsible for operating doors and shifting chimps around, and I have had some luck with a new shifting pattern in recent weeks. With all that promise, it was only a matter of time before I fell on my own sword.

This morning, everything initially went well and all the chimps shifted for breakfast. Amid the second round of shifting, during which Honey B usually decides to employ the filibuster to stall our caregiver agenda, it was actually Willy B who derailed my plans.

I had just successfully rotated Honey B, Mave and Willy B into the clean front rooms and invited the six chimps in the neighboring group to cross over from one playroom to the other. In that moment, Willy grabbed one of the bulky rocker toys in Front Room 5 and started drumming on it, causing the whole building to quake with every hit.

Chimps are generally quite preoccupied with their neighbors and are susceptible to social contagion (scientists call this combination the “Neighbor Effect“), so you can imagine the pandemonium that can evolve from one chimp’s abrasive behavior. In today’s case, the whole sanctuary stopped what they were doing to monitor Willy’s incessant banging with the utmost concern. With so much to be worried about, the six chimps in Cy’s group milled around the accessible spaces, occasionally responding with short outbursts of their own while completely ignoring my invitation to switch playrooms. Still, Willy B kept beating on the available surfaces at the expense of our eardrums.

It’s known that chimpanzees display for various reasons (to influence their group members, advertise their fitness, express their emotional state, cope with tension, etc.), but its difficult to identify a clear motive for any single occurrence of this behavior. Thus, we can’t know what caused Willy B to ceaselessly drum on the furniture today, but we can attest that he continued to do so for the better part of an hour while we all tried to stave off headaches. Perhaps his ultimate goal was simply to spice the morning up with a bit of mayhem.

Eventually, we were able to entice Cy’s group out of the messy playroom long enough to close it off, but it took quite a while to get to that point. Even once we had safely unlocked the enclosure, we had to clean them to the rhythm of Willy’s clamor. We expected that the display would culminate in some sort of conflict within the social groups, but Mave rescued them all from that fate. Amid a break in the commotion, Mave hooted, bounced over to Willy B, and pant-grunted right in his stoic face. Perhaps Willy had wanted that acknowledgement all along, or maybe he was simply growing tired and Mave had seized the opportunity to interrupt in the only way she knew how. Either way, the submissive pant-grunt punctuated the relentless drumming that was holding us all hostage, bringing Willy’s uproar to an end.

In addition to the embedded video, I’ve included the aforementioned photographs below. Be safe and have a good week, everyone!

J.B. put tire chains on the Gator for improved traction in the snow.
J.B. uses a snow rake to proactively clear some heavy snow from the roof.

Let it snow?

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No, just kidding don’t let it snow anymore. At least right now! I grew up in Ohio so I’m used to snow, but this much snow? Not so much. Living in the Georgia mountains the past couple years I kept saying how much I missed being around snow. I think I just got more snow than what I asked for. At least it’s beautiful to look at and the chimpanzees are still enjoying all of their snow snacks.

Like the blog yesterday (What Now?) mentioned, the chimpanzees are making good use of their Greenhouses! The heaters are keeping them pretty warm and the sun was out for most of the day, so it was a good day to be out there. Here are some photos from how the chimpanzees spent their time in the Greenhouses.

Annie seemed very comfortable in her nest.

Missy on the move!

On the other side of the building Cy was looking very majestic in the Greenhouse.

Of course Lucky was too.

Rayne was peering down at me from the mesh above. This square is here so we can see while we operate a door between the Greenhouses.

In the other Greenhouse Willy B was hard at work on the hanging Frisbee puzzles his group got as enrichment for the afternoon.

While most others were in the Greenhouses, Honey B and I were playing a game of chase. She kept stopping by this window because normally we would run outside of the building and meet her there.

This is what the outside of the window looks like today!

Bonus photo from today: Rayne in a box!

What Now?

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Here’s something positive – the chimpanzees are really enjoying the snow snacks that are the result of Snowmageddon 2022!

I tried to get some good photos, but when photo opportunities presented themselves, the chimps were in motion and I only had a cell phone on me. so I only captured the cover photo of this blog post, this blurry image of Foxie who had just retrieved a mouthful of snow from her front rooms and was headed up to the loft in her playroom:

and Gordo who had brought snow from his playroom to the front rooms on that side of the building. He deposited the snow on the floor, and left a bit for Cy to enjoy (see main photo above).

I can’t say that the humans are enjoying the snow quite as much as the chimpanzees right now. Though the last few days have been an adventure, and we’ve certainly laughed a lot, it’s proving to be a logistical challenge to figure out where, exactly, to put all of this stuff. More looms above on the roof, not-so-subtly threatening to upend the progress we’ve made.

Look at the form on Kelsi. Is shoveling an Olympic event? I give her 10/10.

Young’s Hill is inaccessible for a few reasons: 1) there’s so much snow everywhere! The chimps would be chest deep in it, so they have to wait until we can get in there to create a pathway for them.  2) we haven’t yet been able to shovel a pathway for ourselves to the door that opens onto the hill, even if we could let the chimps out. 3) the snow is weighing down the electric fence wires, weakening the system.

More good news, though: we are fully prepared for winter storms. Though it will be a bit before full outdoor access is possible, all of the chimpanzees have lots of indoor space, blankets, toys, food puzzles, movies, and humans plus their partners who drive through the biggest snowstorm in decades to help the onsite staff take care of them.

In addition to all that, they have their indoor/outdoor greenhouses! I’m kicking myself for not getting photos yesterday of the chimpanzees in the new greenhouses (I did get a little video clip of Mave that I posted to our Instagram). We have a new heater that we turned on for an hour or so yesterday, and then the sun kept those tall enclosures warm for the rest of the day. I cleaned the greenhouses this morning and can attest to the fact that they were well used the day before.

All sixteen of the chimpanzees here are the product of very unfortunate circumstances. They shouldn’t be in Cle Elum, Washington. They shouldn’t have been used in medical research. They shouldn’t be in captivity at all. However, given their unfortunate histories, they are extremely fortunate chimpanzees now. And all of us are immensely fortunate to know them.

Even though I can’t shake the feeling that the snow lurking out every window and door is taunting me in some way…

I know it will not last forever. Spring will come, sure as it does every year. We have so much to look forward to as we hunker down and appreciate everything we have, including unlimited snow snacking.

Burrito’s Birthday Dinner

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For the last couple of days we’ve been forced to focus less of our attention on Burrito’s birthday and more on the historic snowfall that we experienced this week. According to the National Weather Service, we recorded the most snowfall ever for our area in a 24-hr period, coming in somewhere around two feet, with much more snow falling both before and after. This afternoon we watched a 6′-tall block of snow, which we dubbed “the iceberg”, slide off the roof, taking a vent pipe along with it. This snow will undoubtedly continue to demand our attention for many days and weeks to come.

But even with this unfortunate distraction, there was no way we could overlook Burrito’s birthday dinner. In fact, it was a dinner so nice we made it twice! I think he enjoyed it even more the second night.

As we dig out from this storm, we’re happy knowing that Burrito has a full stomach and lots of friends to play with, and we’ve got staff and volunteers and plenty of food and supplies. We’ll just hope to not set any more records this month.

Burrito’s 39th Birthday Snowmageddon

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    The view from our security camera pointed at the driveway.

Today Burrito turned 39! Not only did he turn 39, but he turned 39 in the middle of one of the craziest snow storms I’ve ever witnessed in Central Washington. If you know Burrito, a snowmaggeddon is a fitting party that Mother Nature through for Mr. B-the avid snow snacker.

This morning we woke up to several feet of fresh powder and a warning from the local fire department not to drive the highway that leads us to the sanctuary. A few of us did eventually make it in to help Diana and JB who live on the property and we did our best to shovel/clean enclosures/ and fill the chimps with birthday party food.

Unfortunately, the birthday  pasta video won’t make it up tonight as my own power at home where I am now writing this blog has gone out, and my phone is on its last battery legs.

Stay cozy everyone and happy birthday Bub!

Happy Birthday, Burrito!

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Today is our very own Burrito’s 39th(!) birthday! And Paulette Wrisley wanted to help celebrate this incredibly energetic, goofy, and handsome guy by sponsoring his birthday!

“My True Love Valentine, Burrito! Happy birthday my sweet and silly boy!”

Thank you so much Paulette for helping us celebrate our Burrito/Bubba/Bubbie/B!

Party preparations are ready to go, as well as a whole lot of digging out from our current snowstorm! All are safe and well, but things may just look a little different today, so bear with us! 😉 And please come back later to see how everyone here celebrated Burrito’s birthday! It’s safe to say that Burrito got allllllllll the birthday snow he could possibly want!

Happy Birthday, Burrito!! We love you more than you will ever know, you sweet, wild guy.