Archives for February 2026

Love for Nutmeg

February 10, 2026 by Diana

Today is our first in a series of Valentine’s posts about each of the individuals in our care.

We are using the month of love to tell you more about everyone so they can gain more Chimpanzee Pals and Bovine Buddies. We hope to have 30 new pal or buddies by the end of the month!

I wanted to kick off the love with a post about Nutmeg, the steer we lost in March of 2024. Today would have been his 11th birthday.

As we share on his bio page, Nutmeg was born at Farm Sanctuary on February 10, 2015. His mom Betsy, along with Honey, were dairy cows purchased for a reality TV series called “Utopia”. When the show ended, after Honey’s daughter Meredith was born on set, the veterinarian and the show’s producer didn’t want to send pregnant Betsy and her new family back into the dairy industry. Seeking an alternative, and lucky for Nutmeg and his family, they found Farm Sanctuary. Like his cow companions, he came to our sanctuary on November 2, 2018 from Farm Sanctuary‘s Northern California shelter when it closed.

Nutmeg was best known for looking intimidating but being a big softie who still relied on his mom for comfort. He had a boyish charm that he shared with other sanctuary residents, which I wrote about in this blog post. Nutmeg was also known for his enviable curly red hairdo.

He liked tractors (seriously) and scratching his big, lovable head:

In the fall, he was most likely to be found picking apples right off the tree in the winter pasture. I will forever think of that particular tree as being Nutmeg’s.

What got Nutmeg out of bed in the morning was probably Betsy or Honey getting out of bed first and him dutifully following their cue.

Nutmeg was the first steer I got to know well, and I am thankful for every moment I was able to spend with him.

Nutmeg currently has two in memoriam Bovine Buddies. Thank you to them for continuing to honor his memory and his influence on the sanctuary. If you’d like to join their herd, you can become his Buddy here: https://chimpsnw.org/you-can-help/be-a-bovine-buddy/

Terry, Terry, Big and Scary

February 9, 2026 by J.B.

If you’re Rayne or Lucky, you know that Terry’s a big softy. I mean, he cries every time Willy B makes a face at him! And everyone knows he’s not much of a fighter unless he has a whole crew backing him up. Lots of bark, very little bite.

But if you are Missy or Annie, he’s got to be one of the toughest guys ever. He’s so big and fuzzy! And those chest-beat displays—who does that? A gorilla, that’s who! Who is this guy?

That’s the magic of an electric fence. You can talk a big game and never have to back it up.

Sanctuaries often maintain multiple groups of chimps living within sight of one another. This runs counter to the natural territorial behavior of free-living chimpanzees but is often made necessary by practical considerations such as limited space and the economical advantages of shared infrastructure. Our friends at Fundació MONA in Spain looked at how having close neighbors affected the chimpanzees in their care and, as you might expect, there were some downsides. Increased vigilance and self-directed behaviors during some inter-group encounters were taken as evidence of stress. And while they didn’t find the contagious aggression seen in some other studies, in which conflict in one group makes conflict in another group more likely, we can anecdotally report that is does occur here from time to time.

But, as they noted, there are also a number of advantages to these arrangements. For chimps like Terry, they can offer a way to blow off some steam without stirring the pot within his own group—and if the girls across the way happen to be impressed, all the better. For chimps like Burrito, who is coming up on Season 18 of his own reality show, it can be enriching to have a new show with an entirely different cast to watch through the window. And when the chimps across the way are getting everyone riled up, there’s an opportunity for some affiliative interactions within the group. After all, nothing bonds an in-group like an out-group.

There are days when I think Terry would readily trade Willy B to another sanctuary and never have to see his group again. But what would he do without his legions of adoring fans to the other side, to whom he must certainly be The Greatest Chimpanzee That Ever Lived?

Pucker Up

February 8, 2026 by Diana

We have a treat for you today! I am sharing a guest blog post by board member and chimp house volunteer Dr. Lori Sheeran, who is a Professor of Anthropology at Central Washington University.

Dr. Sheeran was inspired by last month’s publication of a scientific article entitled, “A comparative approach to the evolution of kissing” in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior. The article by authors Brindle, Talbot, and West explores the evolution of kissing in Asian and African monkeys and apes.

We thought it would be a great guest blog topic with Valentine’s Day coming up! Please enjoy learning about kissing in our evolutionary kissing cousins from Lori:

To study kissing, scientists first needed to define it: “…a non-agonistic interaction involving directed, intraspecific, oral-oral contact with some movement of the lips/mouthparts and no food transfer (Brindle et al., 2025, p. 1).” I know, not much romance in that definition! The researchers recognize that kissing may occur in sexual and platonic contexts, and that its function likely differs in each context, but they were unable to separate those two contexts in their review of kissing reported in the primate literature.

They also explain that for any given behavior, such as kissing, researchers can think about answering “HOW” questions and answering “WHY” ones. For kissing, HOW questions might include studies focused on the form and context of the behavior, how the behavior is learned, and at what developmental stages it occurs.

WHY questions tend to focus on the evolutionary purpose of the behavior, which usually relates to how it affects the kisser’s survival and reproduction. Here, a researcher might focus on whether those individuals who kiss (or kiss well) have more reproductive opportunities than those who do not kiss (or who kiss poorly).

Kissing occurs in many species, including non-primates, but the authors note that the most information on it currently exists for African and Asian monkeys and large-bodied apes (orangutans, gorillas, chimpanzees, and bonobos). Gibbons and siamangs, sometimes referred to as the small apes, have not been reported kissing, or at least not yet (some gibbon and siamang species, however, do have “love songs” and pairs sing to each other).

The authors’ preliminary results indicate that kissing may have evolved independently in African and Asian monkeys and in large-bodied apes, due to the apparent absence of kissing in gibbons and siamangs. Large-bodied apes’ kissing may have evolved as early as 21.5 million years ago, before the orangutan, gorilla, chimpanzee, and bonobo lineages diverged, because nearly all of these species kiss—with the possible enigmatic exception of eastern gorillas. Thus, as is true for human societies, there is variation in the presence or absence of kissing among large-bodied apes, which opens the possibility that it is a learned and socially transmitted behavior—culture!

The authors had little information on platonic kissing, but I find it interesting to speculate on how this might be an important affiliative behavior. Kissing entails vulnerability, so engaging in it shows some degree of trust in one’s kissing partner. It might occur within primate groups in contexts similar to other affiliative behaviors such as grooming: to repair relationships after a disagreement, to reinforce bonds between parents and children, or to show concern for an injured or bereaved relative.

If you have a chance to pucker up with those you love this Valentine’s Day (human or not!), you might spare a moment to thank our ape ancestors for inventing this marvelous behavior.

Feel free to thank Lori in the comments for this guest blog post!

And if you’re looking for some Super Bowl content, see Chad’s blog post from a few days ago :).

A Bunch of Lousy Photos

February 7, 2026 by Krissy Brasfield

I recently noticed that I have over 8000 pictures and videos saved in my phone. Many of them are blurry, or photos I just don’t need to keep for one reason or another. So I started deleting the ones I don’t want to save. And I came across so many photos of my chimpanzee friends, not always the greatest photos, but special nonetheless. So I thought I’d share them with you! These photos go back about a year. It’s interesting to see who I have pictures of, and who I don’t.

(If you’re wondering how it’s possible that I don’t have any pictures of my good friend Burrito, stay tuned, I’m saving his photos for my next blog! There are SO many!)

George in the chute on a lovely summer afternoon.