Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

Hope. Love. Home. Sanctuary

Archives for February 2024

Test Your Knowledge of Chimpanzees and Other Primates

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We have something a little different for today’s blog post! Our education committee, which includes board members Tara, Lori, and Jessica, created a quiz for you!

Here’s the explanation and the quiz (below) from them:

If you have been a reader of our blog for any period of time, you know that CSNW’s mission is firmly rooted in caregiving and education. We enjoy sharing the daily stories from our staff members who spend their time cleaning, preparing food, and engaging with our family of chimpanzees and bovines. We also share behaviors of wild chimpanzees that we observe in our residents, reminding us that they could have lived freely in the wild had their fates not been overtaken by human intervention.

Informing our supporters is important to ensure that the public is aware of the plight of primates worldwide because awareness brings about action and action results in change. The kind of change that primates need is myriad, but the more people are aware, the more likely they are to donate, demand, and direct the results needed to protect primates and ensure their existence for generations. In contrast, unawareness or ignorance can misinform well-intentioned animal lovers, perpetuation harmful practices (lie roadside zoos, primates as pets, and use in biomedical research and entertainment) that can lead to lives of misery and even extinction.

Whether you are a donor, mission supporter, or a curious reader, we invite you to participate in an interactive series of upcoming blog posts that will focus on education about primates.

To start, we invite you to test your knowledge of chimpanzees and other primates by taking an anonymous quiz. Your responses will directly impact our educational outreach by identifying the topics on which we should focus on next.

Test your knowledge of chimpanzees and other primates at this link or directly on the quiz embedded below.

You can be an advocate for primates by sharing what you learn with your friends and family, further spreading accurate information and breaking common myths. Sharing our blog posts on your social media can have an exponential effect!

Honey B Update and a February Day on the Bray Video

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Watch the video above to see Cy’s group enjoy another mild February day—a welcome change from January’s relentless cold and snow. Just don’t tell Gordo that I shared that clip of him.

And a quick update on Honey B:

As you may know, Honey B sustained a laceration to her lower right eyelid a couple of weeks ago and Dr. Erin leapt into action to perform an emergency repair that same day. After monitoring the healing process, Dr. Erin thought that it would be in Honey B’s long term best interest to have a surgeon perform a revision to the eyelid to ensure that both the lid and tear duct would continue to function correctly. As she always does, Dr. Erin assembled a great team to not only perform the surgery but also to conduct as much diagnostic evaluation and preventative treatment as possible while Honey B was under anesthesia to reduce the need for further procedures down the road.

We were grateful to have Leah Bezzo, CRNA return to the sanctuary to perform anesthesia along with her colleague Christine Zielke, CRNA. Tyler Sugerman, DVM, another veteran CSNW volunteer, performed an abdominal ultrasound using our new machine. On the other side of the table, Jerry Woodfield, DVM DACVIM (Cardiology), performed an echocardiogram. And after the initial tests were conducted, Karen Brantman-Crosetto, DVM DACVO performed the surgery.

Here’s the good news: Honey B is overall quite healthy and Dr. Brantman-Crosetto did a wonderful job on the eyelid. Honey B will, unfortunately, need some additional time apart from her group while the revision heals but we are optimistic that she’ll be back with her friends soon. And in the meantime she will sit with her chimp friends at the window, spend tons of quality time with her human ones, and receive extra enrichment from Chad, Ellen, and the rest of the team.

As she often does, Dr. Erin served as both orchestra conductor and player, sneaking in joint and dental exams, x-rays, and other tests as her assembled team proceeded through their evaluations. Did you know that the CSNW caregivers also take turns serving as Procedure Manager? This role, filled on this occasion by Kelsi, ensures that the medical team follows a schedule developed in advance by Dr. Erin, keeps notes and records throughout the procedure, makes sure each task is completed, and finds that thing that no one else in the clinic can seem to find when they need it.

Many thanks again to this incredible group of volunteer medical professionals! And keep your fingers crossed that Honey B leaves Dr. Brantman-Crosetto’s beautiful handiwork alone.

Mirror Mania

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Chimpanzee intelligence is well-known and a specific aspect of their intelligence that I find particularly fascinating is their awareness of self as separate from others, or ‘theory of mind’. A classic experiment used to test for theory of mind in animals is the mirror test whereby a mark is placed on the face or some other body part of an animals and then they are presented with a mirror. If the animal notices the mark and reaches towards their own face instead of the one in the mirror, this indicates that they are aware that the image in the mirror is themself and not another animal. This works on a number of species we all recognize to be intelligent like elephants, dolphins, and the great apes while, interestingly, other nonhuman primates like monkeys, will fail this test. Human children typically begin to pass the mirror test around the age of two.

I’ve always enjoyed watching chimpanzees look at themselves in the mirror. Some are more interested than others in their own reflections, usually picking at marks or scabs on their face and head, opening their mouths to inspect their teeth and tongue, and sometimes making faces at themselves. Are they amused? Are they curious? What’s happening in those minds?!

To celebrate this endearing behavior, I’ve decided to put together a compilation of photos and videos of the chimps at CSNW looking at their own beautiful faces. Enjoy!

Catching Up With the Nine

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With all the snow and sleet as well as Honey B recovering, the group of nine haven’t been able to get out on the Bray. Today all that changed, after breakfast and some relaxation while caregivers cleaned, the group got outside at lunch time to enjoy the sunshine we’re having right now! Enjoy today’s video of the nine going back out on the Bray!

Cy:

Willy B:

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Meredith’s Healing Update

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As J.B. covered in a previous blog, Meredith started slowing down this past summer which we discovered was due to osteoarthritis. She had a procedure at WSU to correct this in her right front foot, and she has been recovering and healing from this procedure. We were happy to welcome her back home to continue her recovery after her stay at WSU in December and early January, and I wanted to provide you all with an update on her progress since returning home.

Honey checks on her daughter, Meredith

She continues to show promising signs of healing, and seems to be feeling very ready to break out of her recovery stall to rejoin her herd! She has been enjoying extra attention from her caregivers during our cattle time, complete with lots of pets and scratches. Dr. Erin has also been coming for extra check ins on Meredith and helping to care for her and the herd. While I know she is ready to fully rejoin her family, I do think she enjoys having her own personal hay feeder to snack on at her leisure and not having to hurry to finish her grain before grain-obsessed Betsy is done with hers and looking around for more snacks! She will be due for her recheck appointment soon, so we will know more about exactly how her foot is healing. We hope for continued good news!

Enjoy some pictures of the rest of the herd as well. We are all enjoying the sunshine today!

Nutmeg showing off his best side (okay, all sides are his best side) and looking a little sassy

L to R: Nutmeg, Honey, Betsy, and Meredith in the back.

Betsy and Honey, looking ready to drop their next album!

February celebrations!

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February is a wonderful, liminal month. Being February 1st, my maternal and paternal ancestors, most all of whom are Irish, would be celebrating Imbolc – or Saint Brigid’s Day. The half-way point between the winter solstice and the spring equinox and the gradual returning of light, a breath as we blink toward the slowly brightening horizon.

Here at the sanctuary, we find this difficult to believe. It’s been a curious winter and while not the typical snowfall, the bout of extreme cold temperatures and endless cloud and fog (and now rain) has been different for us. Truly, in the last couple of months we’ve only seen a few brief glimpses of the sun and none of our brilliant winter night skies and meteor showers. All that to say, despite personally being an immense lover of winter, I believe we are all down with the hopeful return of some sunlight.

But there is always beauty to be seen, like this magical pink fog the other morning!

It’s also an enchanted month filled with the spirit of revelry and Carnivale, so all of you celebrating a February birthday chose a good time to be born! I’m not sure I could see your sanctuary February birthday twin quite fitting that theme, but he definitely holds a wondrously huge presence, so we’ll go with that. And given that we also have Valentine’s Day to look forward to this month, he might actually be the perfect representative (along with his mama).

It’s Nutmeg! Betsy’s beloved baby boy is turning 9 years old on February 10th!

Betsy and wee Nutmeg (photo courtesy of Farm Sanctuary):

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…and the tables have turned (only in size, not love):

This might be a bovine version of a second line parade for Mardi Gras season:

For everyone who is already a Bovine Buddy to Nutmeg, another member of his family, or the whole tiny herd, thank you!! And if it’s something you’re interested in becoming, click here to learn more! Your support provides them a rare life in sanctuary, together.

We are so immensely grateful to each of you who are here with us through all of the seasons of the bovines’ and chimpanzees’ lives. You are the reason their lives in sanctuary exist and we could hoot and holler about you every single day. Thank you for every single thing you do for them and every single way you support them, from following along on social media, to attending events, to donating time, money and in-kind gifts, to sharing their stories, to not least of all, loving them.

May February bring you glimmers of the increasing light to come (or of a magical autumn ahead for those in the southern hemisphere of whom I am Elphaba green with envy of), the inspiration to kick up your paws, hooves, or otherwise, in celebration and anticipation, or merely the chance to revel in staying cozy just…awhile…longer…

Jamie:

Lucky, Dora and Rayne:

Honey B yawning:

Barn Kitty:

Foxie and Dora:

Negra: