Anna posted a few weeks ago about George becoming more comfortable here at CSNW and starting to take part in normal chimpanzee behaviors such nest building. In the beginning his nests were pretty sparse and made mostly of scraps of paper, boxes and the occasional blanket. More recently George started making much more elaborate nests of blankets and large sheets of paper we offer him as an enrichment item. In the wild chimpanzee’s make a new nest every night so here we do deconstruct their nests daily during our cleaning routine and we make sure they have clean blankets, paper and enrichment items they might like to include in their nests, like boxes, scarves and wooden blocks.
George in one of his first, more elaborate blanket nests. You can see he has a box of enrichment items that we offer all the chimps so they can carry them, play with them and just use the items as they see fit. Sometimes these items even make their way into nest designs, especially with the more experienced nest builders like Negra and Jamie:
In this nest he included some magazine pages:
Here, George opted for a paper base with a blanket over him:
