Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

Hope. Love. Home. Sanctuary

Anna

Quiet friends

by

This morning we watched the chimps go out on Young’s Hill for their first adventure of the day. They did their usual scatter into the wind technique, each chimp moving in a different direction, checking out all the changes that occurred overnight. The chimps all have different priorities when they’re outside, but there is usually a lot of chasing (especially between Annie and Missy) and serious perimeter patrolling (done by Jamie). As Katelyn and I observed the chimps flit in and out of our view, we saw two figures come hiking down the far off edge of the hill together.

Jody was following Foxie diligently on a perimeter patrol. Foxie would periodically break into a playful jog in front of her.

These two don’t have quite as famous a relationship as Annie and Missy, but they do spend a lot of time together. Whether it be grooming or exploring, they have a special quiet friendship that seems to suit them just fine.

For the thrill of it

by

When Jamie decides she wants to go for a walk with a caregiver, there is almost always one chimp that decides to join the hike. Quite often, it’s Missy, but it isn’t always so obvious at first. Instead of following close behind, Missy makes sure to give Jamie a big head start so she can properly race to catch up.

Missy finds so much happiness in simply running as fast as she can, it’s hard to imagine her previous life spent warehoused in a basement.

Rainy day puzzles

by

A rainy day like today seemed like a good time to introduce the chimps to a new enrichment food puzzle. Before we fully integrate a puzzle into the chimps’ enrichment schedule, we often do a trial run where we try and gauge the chimps’ level of interest in the puzzle, as well as how difficult it is for them to complete. We ultimately want the puzzle to be really time consuming for them (to keep their minds and bodies busy), but not so much that they give up and stop trying. Today we put out a few bath towel knots that had walnuts tied into them. To really make the puzzle challenging, the towels were dipped in water and frozen prior to the chimps receiving them. All throughout the rest of our cleaning this morning, we heard the thumping sounds of the chimps working on their puzzles in the loft of the playroom. I think we can consider this trial run a success, minus the fact that I didn’t manage to get any photos to document the event. Once we get photos, we will add these Frozen Towel Knots to the Enrichment Database on our website. If you haven’t checked out the new look of the database on our beautifully redone website, I highly recommend it!

Because no blog is complete without photos, here is a selection from the vault:

Burrito:

Jody:

Negra:

A burst of happiness

by

When some of the chimps are feeling a bit silly and relaxed, they have this little routine they do where they lay on their back and flail their arms and legs in the air and side to side for a few seconds. It’s sort of like a shiver of joy, contentment and energy runs through them.
Here’s Foxie’s upside down moment she had this morning on Young’s Hill:

With that out of her system, Foxie and Dora continued their day together:

Added enrichment

by

Believe it or not, Jamie, the self-appointed boss, has a tendency to hoard enrichment food puzzles. If we put out a dozen Kongs with peanuts in them, Jamie always winds up with a big pile and more than her fair share. To encourage “sharing,” we try to spread out the enrichment as far as possible and we attach a lot of the chimps’ puzzles to the enclosure caging. We use padlocks to hang raisin boards and other puzzles and we have recently introduced dipper tubes which we screw into fixed spots on the outside of their enclosure. With a lot of focus and determination, Jamie has made these new dipper tubes into her own unique personal project. As you’ll see, she loves a good challenge!