Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

Hope. Love. Home. Sanctuary

Diana

The Fortunate Demise of Three Snowpersons

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For a little caregiver fun, we would like you to decide which snowperson is the best. You can base your decision on whatever subjective aspects you choose (though please do let us know how you based your decision).

All three seemed equally enjoyed by the chimpanzees. Please leave your votes and commentary in the comments!

Hat Snow Person:

 

Reclined Snow Person:

 

Lettuce-Head Snow Person:

Thanks for playing along!

The Key to Enrichment Part Deux

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Last week, I wrote a bit about enrichment and some of the challenges of finding enrichment that is safe and suitable for certain chimpanzees with a proclivity for chewing on all manner of materials.

Today I am expounding on that a bit as a thank you to everyone who gave towards the Media and Enrichment Fund in the Comfort & Joy Auction (I listed everyone below!).

Enrichment is fun – it’s toys, and friends, and structures, and food puzzles, but it’s one of the most serious and important parts of caring for chimpanzees in captivity. Chimpanzees did not evolve to live in captivity. Captivity limits their lives, and chimpanzees need things to do! I am sure that enrichment coordinator Ellen would tell you that coming up with and giving the chimpanzees enrichment is extremely rewarding.

Seeing a chimpanzee interact with and be entertained and engaged by their environment is a uniquely fulfilling experience. Like Cy with his magazines. It’s difficult to imagine him without them, to be honest.

It’s quite obvious when Cy has been enriched with a magazine. He leaves evidence.

Volunteer Sarah C. was commenting about such evidence today while looking at one of the security cameras in the Marmot Mountain Playroom.

Here is the before security camera shot:

During:

After:

Huge thanks to the following donors for giving to the Media and Enrichment Fund in Comfort and Joy to support not just Cy’s magazine habit, but also books for Jamie and enrichment for all of the chimpanzees: Monica, Vicki, Jamie, Shelly, Arlen, Anne, Linda, Diana, Nancy, Julie, Jessica, Jayne, Deborah, Sue, Jackie, Jane, Deborah, Kevin, Jennie, Debbie, Nancy, Ionna, Lisa, Elena, Amy, Susan, Debbie, Martine, Zoe, Marisela, Regina, Cheryl, Linda, and Dora!

I have good news for those donors – the bookmarks celebrating our resident bookworms have arrived, and I’ll be sending them out this week!

The Key to Enrichment

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Continuing on with our Comfort & Joy online auction thanking, today I would like to thank Melody W. for her winning bid for keys for the chimpanzees.

We are so glad that Enrichment Coordinator Ellen found these keys. We have mentioned before that it is a challenge to find enrichment that is safe and suitable for the chimpanzee group from Wildlife Waystation because certain members of the group (cough, cough, Gordo, cough Dora) will chew on (and, we fear, swallow) plastic, rubber, stuffing from stuffed animals, and some fabrics. That limits the variety of items that we can give them, perhaps more than you would think.

We have an ongoing quest to find material that withstand their impressive canines, and these keys so far have passed the test.

Of course, the main element that you want in enrichment is popularity. It’s not enriching if no one pays any attention to it. This is really where individualized care shines. We know that Foxie is happier when she has her dolls, Cy has his magazines, and Jamie has her boots and books.

Everyone is different and has their favorite things, but certain items have more universal appeal.

We’ve seen these keys in the hands of almost everyone in Cy’s group, and several members of Jamie’s group too!

Thank you again, Melody, for providing such a well-loved item for the chimpanzees.

Burrito and the Burrito Scarf

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This is one of my favorite traditions now – sharing the items that supporters won in the Comfort & Joy online auction to give the chimpanzees!

I chose one that I thought would be an instant hit, and Burrito did not disappoint.

Thank you Diana K. for your participation on the auction, Thyra for your talents and for letting us use your design for the scarf, and Monica for coming up with the idea for the Comfort & Joy online auction and for sponsoring it for three years running!

You all have definitely brought joy to Burrito, and he, exponentially, brings joy to us.

Burrito’s Personal Trainer for Winter

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First things first, BIG thanks to everyone who participated in the Comfort & Joy online auction!! Your support brought me joy for sure, and I look forward to sending out your winnings over the next two weeks!

I really am so incredibly grateful for the kind people that the chimpanzees have attracted to support the sanctuary.

I know Burrito and Foxie, the subjects of today’s video, are two who have caused a good number of people to follow the blog.

I hope you enjoy the video and give thanks to them!

 

Primates in the News & Honey Cow’s 17th Birthday

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First, bask in comfort (and joy) by bidding on the latest item we’ve added to the Comfort & Joy online auction: a blanket for you and a matching blanket for Negra featuring the beloved image from an original painting by Margaret H. Parkinson entitled Negra in the Sun.

There’s just ten days left in the auction, and we’re continuing to add items regularly, so check in on the auction and bid often!

Next, today we celebrated Honey Cow’s 17th birthday! Enrichment Coordinator Ellen made a special treat for Honey and her family – pureed pumpkin, served twice-baked potato style in a pumpkin bowl shell.

All of the cows are known to be a bit suspicious of us humans and the odd things we try to convince them are food. As reported and documented (see photos below) by their server, Ryan, they gave Honey’s birthday treat some, “complimentary sniffs”, but didn’t taste them in his presence. Perhaps they were just waiting for him to leave before partaking in a private birthday celebration.

I really love the cows so much. You might think of herd animals as being more uniform in their behavior, but Honey, Betsy, and Meredith have such different personalities and ways of going about life. Honey can often be described as the Jamie of the cow family – she does not put up with any funny business and will let you know if you’ve overstepped your boundaries. Yet, in some ways, she’s the most cooperative when we need to shift the cows into a particular area. Just like Jamie. I’ve come to realize that a lot of Honey’s assertiveness towards humans is more threat than actually wishing people harm, and, I think, she actually likes to be around people.

Another thing that Honey really likes is rubbing up against brushes. We have a really cool brush with automatic swinging action in the online auction that you can “bid” on so that we can buy it for the cows. It costs about $900 so we could use more people bidding on it. Check it out here!

Honey:

 

Betsy:

 

Meredith:

 

Finally, for this multi-topic blog post: primates have been in the news a lot this last week.

We are beyond THRILLED with the news of the last 23 remaining chimpanzees living at an Air Force base in Alamogordo, New Mexico will be finally moving to Chimp Haven! We’ve been following the chimpanzees in Alamogordo for years, hoping for this decision for more than a decade.

You can read about the news and some of the history of the facility and the work to get the chimpanzees moved in this article from the Humane Society of the United States. That article also notes two sad facts: 21 chimpanzees have passed away at the Alamogordo facility in the last five years, never having an opportunity to experience a sanctuary life, and there are still 48 more government owned or supported chimpanzees at two other facilities.

Not mentioned, because they are not supported by the federal government, are the 88 remaining chimpanzees living at New Iberia Research Center (NIRC), awaiting their sanctuary retirement; Project Chimps has been able to rehome over 100 chimpanzees from NIRC and has a contract to rehome the remaining chimpanzees as they are able.

A great resource that shows where all of the captive chimpanzees live in the United States is the Project ChimpCare map, created and maintained by Lincoln Park zoo.

By way of taking a bit of a break from all of this text, here are a couple of photos I took recently.

Another of Rayne in her box (the same photo session as the photo at the top of this post):

And this one of Burrito. He and Jamie often walk along these logs at the top of  the new Young’s Hill as part of their perimeter walks now. Burrito likes to stop for a minute and sit down so the humans can catch up:

 

Another primate news story that has garnered widespread attention is the 43 young female rhesus macaque monkeys who escaped a warehouse and breeding facility for laboratory monkeys in South Carolina owned by Alpha Genesis. Read more about this from CBS. Born Free is requesting that the monkeys, once captured, be moved to their sanctuary.

These two stories are reminders and indicators of the status of primate research in the United States.

For chimpanzees, invasive research has ended, and the decision about the Alamogordo chimpanzees means there will be fewer than 50 chimpanzees living in federally funded biomedical research facilities and fewer than 150 total living in research facilities. Compare that with the 742 chimpanzees living in accredited sanctuaries.

The situation for monkeys is very different. Alpha Genesis alone owns about 5,000 monkeys, and the total number of monkeys (of all species) held for research purposes in the United States exceeds 100,000. It is staggering to think about that many individuals. Perhaps this latest escape will raise important questions about our use of monkeys.