Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

Hope. Love. Home. Sanctuary

Diana

A Delicacy Worth the Risk

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Today we set out a breakfast forage on Young’s Hill. Here’s a photo of the morning sun glinting off of Negra’s beautiful head:

As we were watching Jody forage near the cabin, she screamed a little and batted at the air. We all collectively thought she had been stung by a wasp.  When Jody started to walk towards the greenhouse, we noticed she was carrying a wasp nest!

A few years ago, much to our surprise, Jamie and Missy discovered the delicacy of wasp larvae.

Chimpanzees in the wild have also been known to brave a sting or a bite to get an insect meal.

Apparently Jody has also found out about this delicacy.

She did pay a price for her prize, today, though. At lunch, Dr. Erin noticed her right eye was swollen. She’ll probably sleep well tonight with a little benadryl and some ibuprofen. We hope the snack was worth it!

Ceremonial Groundbreaking

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Yesterday was awesome. At our 2016 HOOT! gala, we had an exciting auction item – the “Golden Shovel Groundbreaking” with the opportunity to “fling the first shovel of dirt at the groundbreaking for the expansion.”

Yesterday, we were able to finally have that ceremonial groundbreaking!

There were two separate donors who won the item at the auction – Chris Gossard (and his wife Lee Ann) and Pat Cattolico. Chris and Pat donned some (also-ceremonial) protective gear and indulged us in a photo shoot.

Chris, Pat, Pat’s sister, former board member Sharon Burke, current board member Jessica Mayhew and her partner Chad then helped to put out a watermelon, cherry, and carrot forage on Young’s Hill for the chimpanzees’ dinner.

Negra was the first out the raceway as she has been for almost all hill forages so far this summer! As a stationary photographer, it was hard to keep up with her as 45+ year-old Negra climbed structures (including the new structure we are informally calling Escher for M.C. Esher), waded through the tall grass, and generally acted with her newfound adventurous spirit.

Burrito found the stash hidden in the treat rock:

as Annie hung around:

It was a great day. Every day that Annie, Burrito, Foxie, Jamie, Jody, Missy, and Negra spend at the sanctuary is great.

The staff and board of directors feel so fortunate to have such generous, fun, and loyal donors that choose to support the chimpanzees and the future plans for the sanctuary, and yesterday we were reminded again of just how wonderful CSNW supporters are.

Countdown to the start of construction: 15 days!

Females in Charge

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We’re getting ready for the small groundbreaking ceremony this afternoon! The actual construction on Phase 1 of the expansion will start in a little over two weeks, but today we’re having a ceremonial start to this huge project. I can’t even express how happy we are to have arrived at this day and how incredibly grateful I am for every single person who has donated these last two years as we fundraised to begin this project.

We have a lot of work ahead of us, but it’s amazing to be finally at the first step towards bringing more chimpanzees home.

 

In the meantime, I bring you my thoughts this morning as I walked around Young’s Hill with Jamie, Missy, Jody, and Foxie walking together on the inside of their habitat…

In the wild, chimpanzees societies are patriarchal. With their might, size, and testosterone, even low-ranking adult males are said to outrank all of the adult females in any given group. In captivity, things are often quite different. Every group of chimpanzees that I have worked with for an extended period of time has had a strong female that clearly called many of the shots and at least occasionally put their foot down with males in the group.

Maybe it’s because the chimpanzees I’ve known have not been socialized into a normal chimpanzee society – they were raised in human environments or spent much of their time living alone or in pairs within laboratory settings. Or maybe part of it is that chimpanzees are flexible and adaptable, figuring their relationships out as they go rather than having a rigid, strictly biologically-driven social order. Most likely it’s a bit of this and a bit of that.

Even though it’s not what they would be doing in the wild, and it would likely be much better if they were living in a more balanced male-to-female group, I can’t help but admire the female power that exists at the sanctuary.

Like today, when this all-female patrol walked around the perimeter of their territory.

The Tightrope Walkers

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Jamie and Missy have somewhat different life histories, but they definitely share some things in common.

 

Missy was born in a laboratory in 1975 and used both for hepatitis vaccine testing (and likely other types of biomedical research) and also for breeding. She had four infants, but she did not get to raise any of them.

 

Jamie‘s early life, on the other hand, is a little more of a mystery. We believe she was born in captivity, and we were told that she was raised in a human environment by an animal trainer for the first nine years of her life. She most likely was used within the entertainment industry. Perhaps she was trained to do tricks and loaned out for birthday parties, or maybe she performed in a circus or a roadside zoo attraction.

After “growing up human” during her formative years, she was then put into biomedical testing and, like Missy and all of the Cle Elum Seven, she was used for hepatitis vaccine research. As far as we know, she was never used to breed more chimpanzees.

 

One somewhat random thing that these two chimpanzees have in common is the joy they seem to get out of tightrope walking.

Given Jamie’s early history, you might wonder whether she was trained to tightrope walk as a youngster, and perhaps she was.

But Missy, as far as we know, spent her entire life before coming to the sanctuary in laboratory environments, and not ones that likely had ropes or fire hose or the room to tightrope walk.

In the wild, chimpanzees do a lot of their traveling on the ground, but, when in the jungle, they do traverse through trees and vines to get from one place to another and when playing, hunting, fighting (or running away from a fight), foraging for fruit, and finding a spot for a nest. With their opposable toes, they can grip branches and vines with their feet.

 

Most good captive environments for great apes include ropes or fire hose so that the apes can do what comes naturally to them. If you google “tightrope walk chimp” you will find all sorts of photos of chimpanzees and (apparently mislabeled) gorillas, orangutans, and gibbons in zoos and sanctuaries.

With chimpanzees who have grown up in laboratories, you really never know what they will be comfortable with and what they may decide to ignore or even be afraid of doing. We are unlikely to ever see Foxie tightrope walk, given her avoidance of non-sturdy surfaces, but we did spot Burrito trying out this activity for the first time earlier this month (sorry, we didn’t get a photo). They are all going for year-ten firsts lately!

Jamie and Missy, though, both seem to really enjoy this activity and will do it on their own apparently just for fun. I noticed recently that they do have different styles. I think this may have to do with their individual centers of gravity.

Missy is short and can glide across a fire hose without much need for outstretched arms for balancing:

 

Jamie, on the other hand, is long and lean and seems to rely on quite a bit of balancing assistance from her arms:

Whatever the origins of their common interest in this activity, I’m just glad they can now do it whenever they want.

 

More firsts after ten years

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The featured photo (the one at the top of the page) literally brought tears to my eyes this morning. Well, not the photo itself, but seeing Negra in the grass with that very relaxed face. She has come so far in the last ten years, and has made new strides just in the last two weeks since I wrote about her (and Foxie’s and Annie’s) independence. And she’s not the only one (there’s a bonus Burrito story down below the photos of Negra).

Two days ago, following our PRT session, I was starting on a walk with Jamie, when I noticed an unmistakable figure ahead. Though I knew it could only be Negra, I really questioned my eyes when I saw this chimpanzee person climb into the hammock. Luckily I had the camera with me and was able to get evidence of what I believe is a first-ever event.

 

Negra’s main purpose on the hill these days is to find prickly lettuce. She sets off on these expeditions with a certain amount of determination, so it was very special that she stopped and took in the view from this new perspective. And just look at her face in that photo of her in the hammock and the featured photo – she is relaxed, content, and at home.

After this pause, she continued on her journey:

 

almost disappearing into the sea of grass:

 

Once she happened upon a spot to forage for the plants she is so fond of, she disappeared again, this time into a sea of wild mustard:

 

I moved to get a better angle (Jamie was being quite patient with me taking photos of Negra, waiting to continue the walk we had begun):

 

Here’s one for perspective. Negra is at the very top of the hill, beyond the tower structures:

 

Lately on these treks, another chimpanzee, usually Jody (below) or Missy, will join Negra. Perhaps they are ensuring everything is okay, or maybe they are hoping to share in her harvest:

 

At 45, after decades of living in confinement, Negra proves that it is never too late for anyone to try something new and become something you never thought you would be.

 

Perhaps Burrito has been observing Negra’s new sense of adventure because today he climbed up onto to the bar structure!

Sometimes I don’t notice when someone hasn’t done something until I see them do it for the first time.

 

I am pretty sure that Foxie was aware that this was a new occasion because she was very excited to see Burrito up there next to her.

 

and he seemed pleased with the experience too:

 

What a fantastic week of firsts as we head into tomorrow’s celebration of the ten year anniversary of the chimpanzees’ arrival to Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest.

 

Conflict

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We had a question recently on YouTube wondering if the chimpanzees fight less than other groups. It made us realize that we really don’t share that part of their daily lives much. I tried to provide some answers as to why in this video, but maybe there are other reasons that are less obvious (number of likes on Facebook? I hope that’s not it!).

We do have a category called “Fights” for blog posts, so you can check out previous posts on the subject here.

Let us know what you think – does this surprise you or make you uncomfortable to see the chimpanzees fighting?

Independence

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When  the chimpanzees first had access to the two-acre Young’s Hill enclosure in 2011, it was pretty intimidating for some of them. Annie, Foxie, and Negra were among the more wary of the large space and unfamiliar surroundings.

In those early days, J.B. wrote about Annie’s reluctance and Missy encouraging her and about Negra seeking reassurance from Jamie when she got a little spooked after summoning the courage to go out there in the first few weeks. He also wrote about a little motivation game that Foxie seemed to invent that got her outside even when she was hesitant.

The experience of having this new big space really brought all of the chimps together as a group and we saw them look out for one another in ways we hadn’t seen in the years prior. It was so touching to witness.

Fast forward almost seven years to today…

Foxie split off from her walking group:

 

Jake and I completely lost track of her until we spotted her again at the top of the hill on the towers with her red haired doll:

 

Jody was looking for Foxie too, and climbed up to make sure all was okay before she went about her own business:

 

Annie went out with Missy first thing, but then completely disappeared on her own, foraging for her favorite plants:

 

I noticed Missy keeping an eye on Annie, just like the friend that she’s always been:

 

Negra broke free of her usual forage pathway at lunch and climbed up on the shaky bridge (this is highly unusual, based on the old Negra, but maybe part of a new normal level of adventure for her):

 

Each year these seven chimpanzees gain more confidence, but they needed each other for encouragement, motivation, and someone to follow along the way. And even in their newfound independence, they continue to look out for one another.