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!
I volunteered at Wildlife Waystation and was allowed to interact with the chimps. I love seeing how they are progressing and how they
have progressed under your supervision and help!! Even though I miss them, I can see that they are happy and cared for! Thank you!!
Hi, Julie, it must a comfort to follow the lives of the ex Wildlife Waystation chimps at this fantastic sanctuary. During your time as a volunteer at the Wildlife Waystation did you meet Booee the sign language Chimpanzee? I was a sponsor for him from 2005 to 2012 when he sadly died. I also sponsored sha Sha Sha Chimpanzee at the Waystation until its closure in 2019. Sha Sha now resides happily at the Center for Great Apes and I sponsorher there. I loved them both. Thanks, Susan
I did well, Diana! Kudos to you, my teachers!
For some odd reason, this question chose today to come at me (maybe because students are supposedly working on a surprise for Jamie and we talked the other day):
I get the sense that Jamie intuits that you and JB are the “bosses” on your side of the mesh… thinking back to someone who recently got a “special delivery” from Jamie on their birthday, I wondered….. when was the last time Jamie threw it at you or JB? Has it been a while? Or is no one safe?
I only got one wrong. Got gibbons and baboons mixed up. Fun quiz! The other questions were easy thanks to what I’ve learned from the blogs!
I think this is a well-crafted quiz, though I was thrown by the descriptor “fission/fusion”. My dad was a nuclear physicist, so i didn’t suss the correct referents. lol
The CSNW blog is a treasure trove of anecdotes and information that would make any social primate researcher envious. Even so, reading it always generates new questions and perspectives for me about chimpanzees, captive or wild, and about what it means to provide sanctuary for such sensitive intelligent beings. Most recently I was wondering how you decide if, say, Jamie is difficult or crabby due to lack of a specific enrichment item or in spite of all the tailored enrichment you provide? In other words, do you ever perceive she is “feeling her captivity” and cannot be mollified, but must just work through it on her own – or, yikes, on other chimpanzees?
Thank you for the quiz. Like Cy and Rayne, i love reading and i’ve read quite a lot about our non-human primate brothers and sisters. Thank you for loads of info i can share with others.
What a great idea testing our knowledge of chimpanzees! I did get a few wrong and I was thrown by the chimps in laboratories question. I wrongly thought that they were being actively used in experiments (reasoning why else would they be there). Thanks for keeping me on my toes and learning something know about our beloved chimpanzees.
Thank you for the quiz, after reading many of your blog posts it wasn’t difficult. I also read a lot about chimps, bonobos and gorillas, and I did the MOOC-course by Duke Universtiy about chimpanzee behaviour and conservation (it’s still available for everyone, I can heartfeltly recommend it). February 14 is World Bonobo Day, maybe you could set up a quiz about the similarities and differences between the two species. Or another idea for quizzes: showing pictures of CSNW chimps and the quiz-takers should find out what their gestures/facial expressions/body postures etc mean.
The test is a great (and fun!) idea, and I like that you and the board members are going to continue on this path. It made me think of your past caregiver, Debbie, and her program “Eyes On Apes” that she organized for CSNW. (I miss Eyes On Apes.) Knowledge is power. Please continue to fill our brains with all the information necessary to be strong advocates for our great ape friends.
On a similar note…We recently rewatched the Netflix series “Chimp Empire”. I couldn’t help but recall Chad’s review in a past blog post. The photography is mind-blowingly magnificent. It was fun to recognize who was who as they appeared on screen (before the names came up). The chimpanzees are so beautiful, the coloring of their faces, their freckles. All of them, so lovely to watch. BUT, I couldn’t help but think what an incredible teaching moment this series could have been with just a little more effort. Through Netflix it will reach so many people, what a golden opportunity. More information about chimpanzees should have been (needed to be) explained by the narrator. It was frustrating. At the very least I would like to see them add a closing narration, one that would benefit our wild chimpanzees and our chimpanzees in sanctuary homes.
Agreed. I had this unpleasant feeling while watching the series that – although it wasn’t the intention of the fiilmmaker – even more people will think of the chimps as wild and dangerous beasts. Interestingly, the director made another films years before this one, same place and story (the rift of the chimp troop and the following violence), but with lots of explanations from the field researchers working on Ngogo Chimpanzee Project on site. After the Netflix series I read an interview with one of those researchers, David Watts, who had the same problem with the way how chimps were featured in the series and how their peaceful moments were ignored. I love that original, but less-know documentary movie about this incredible story, if you have the chance, watch it, the title is Rise of the Warrior Apes. (I think it’s still available on YT)
Thank you Adrienne for mentioning the first documentary. I have seen it but long ago. I will have to rewatch it again. On Netflix’s website there is a podcast with an interview with the director of Chimp Empire— a very good listen and it includes an explanation as to why the narration was deliberately sparse. Still, it seemed like a little bit of a missed opportunity not to explain more details. I think J.B. Has spoiled me! 🙂 In my head, while I was watching the series, I could hear J.B.’s calm soft voice discussing being an Alpha chimp, or the many factors of grooming, discussing alliances, and more.
Clearly Netflix needs to produce a Season 2. (Spoiler alert, you can read and catch up on what happened to the characters in 2023 on Netflix’s website) One change needs to be made for a Season 2, J.B. does the narration!
Thank you, Kathleen, I’ll definitely check the information on Netflix! (But who on Earth is J.B.????)
Sancuary Co-director!