Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest
Hope. Love. Home. Sanctuary
We are so lucky to get an amazing weekly shipment of fresh produce because of an extraordinarily generous donation from Darwin’s Natural Pet Products. We never quite know what type of food is going to arrive each week and it’s really enriching for the chimps to have such a beautiful variety! Our last shipment included gigantic pomegranates that have been a perfect addition to both breakfasts and dinner forages. This morning Negra’s lips were positively dripping with their ruby red juices.
We never want to give the wrong impression to our followers that chimpanzees are always gentle and sweet. It’s much easier to take a video of the chimps playing than fighting, so our blog gets a bit skewed sometimes. The chimps do in fact spend most of their days grooming, napping, eating and playing with each other, but they also have regular disagreements and these disputes happen every day (sometimes multiple times a day). Here’s a short clip from today’s lunch. Warning! There is a lot of screaming in this video and some may find that difficult to watch, but no one was hurt.
Compared to humans, chimpanzees have a tall and narrow pelvis, flat feet (not arched) and a differently shaped backbone. In short, a chimp’s skeletal structure is ideal for quadrupedal locomotion and when they are on the ground, they generally use all four limbs to get from one place to another.
This is not to say the chimps don’t use just their legs sometimes. It just looks like it takes a bit more effort:
But sometimes it can be convenient to switch to bipedalism:
The chimps have incredibly strong upper bodies that are perfect for climbing and swinging.
And having opposable toes comes in handy to add that bit of extra grip when you need it.
Sometimes, when they are feeling extra daring, those toes are all they need:
Many of you may know we kicked off an extremely exciting fundraising campaign on Giving Tuesday this year. A HUGE thank you to everyone who has contributed so far, we are all so grateful! On top of this goal, we are starting to think about setting up our new Phase 1 building with all the final items we need to get the sanctuary addition operating smoothly. We have updated our Amazon Wish list with some necessities and will keep adding to it in the coming days.
There are some big ticket wishes like a new washer and dryer and some smaller, but still important things like this Dry Erase board for our clinic. We are all SO ready to get to start using this new building of ours and we can’t wait to see it all set up!
Breakfast (and all the fruit that comes with it) is the most exciting meal of the day at the sanctuary. Make sure to turn your volume up to hear some serious orange slice slurping (you can also catch Jody eating in the background).
Every now and then, it’s fun to dig in the vaults of never before seen photos to see what’s hiding in there. Today I found that I had a lot of photos of Foxie, and in each picture she was holding a different doll. Above you will see her with Strawberry Shortcake.
Here she is with Strawberry’s friend, Lime Chiffon:
Here she has a pink haired troll doll:
And finally Foxie and her Lemon Meringue Doll:
The chimpanzees eat a diet consisting of primarily fresh produce. For added protein, they eat a variety of nuts, seeds, primate chow and soy protein powder (in their a.m. smoothies). A few years ago, caregiver Debbie was able to bring some hard boiled eggs from her free range chicken friends for the chimps to enjoy. She wrote this blog about their introduction (or re-introduction) to the treat. As you will read, Foxie was completely unsure about why anyone would ever want to eat such a thing.
This summer my husband and I adopted four little red hens that get to roam happily around our spacious yard. Here’s Charlotte:
Since the chickens have come, the chimps have enjoyed hard boiled eggs about once a week for breakfast (to replace their usual primate chow).
And Foxie must have figured it out at some point, because she now seems just as excited to eat them as everyone else:
