Go behind the scenes with a photographer at Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest and find out the secret of the “serious” photos taken of a chimpanzee named Burrito.
Chimpanzee Identification Contest
Do you want to win a 2017 Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest calendar?
If you can correctly identify each chimpanzee in all seven photos below, you’ll be entered to win!
Fine print: You can only enter once, so be sure of your answer before submitting your responses. The winner will be chosen at random among those with correct answers on Monday morning at 11:00am. If you are a volunteer of the sanctuary, you’re not eligible, because that wouldn’t be fair – but we’ll figure out another way for you to have a chance to win a calendar.
You can write your guesses in a comment below this post, or if you want more anonymity, email me: [email protected].
This is an “open book” quiz, so feel free to go through old blog posts and look on the chimpanzees’ individual pages (click on the Polaroid-looking photos at the very top of the page).
Here we go:
#1
#2
#3
#4
#5
#6
#7
Chimpanzees playing = your #GivingTuesday thanks!
Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest supporters have done it again! We initially made it a goal to raise $12,000 today for Giving Tuesday.
That goal has been surpassed, and we have a new challenge – a supporter at a distance is putting a matching challenge check in the mail for the next $1,000 raised, so I’ve increased the total goal to $15,000.
There’s still eight hours to go before midnight. Can we do it?
I am pretty sure that the video at the end of this post that Anna took today of the chimpanzees playing will inspire you to donate if you haven’t already and will also hopefully inspire you to share this post so more people know about our new goal.
We’ve been inspired all day by the messages that have come in with donations. This recent comment really summed it all up (thank you!): What makes my heart soar is “Knowing that Annie, Burrito, Foxie, Jaime, Jody, Missy and Negra are safe, happy, living a full enriching life with companionship and are so very loved! I am so thrilled about the expansion and future retirees that will be joining you soon! Thank you for giving lives back.”
We were also inspired by Mary, a challenge donor earlier in the day who first heard about the sanctuary in 2007 through her daughter who was enrolled in the Primate Behavior program at Central Washington University at the time. Mary helped with the early construction of the chimp house, setting forms in the cold and helping with roof trusses during the windy season. Mary has been a donor ever since, and her generous pledge today helped surpass our goal.
Donor stories make my heart soar!
And chimpanzees playing. Definitely chimpanzees playing.
How do chimpanzees walk?
Chimpanzees are considered quadrupedal (walking on four limbs), but they don’t have four legs like many other mammal species. Like humans, they have two legs and two arms. They not only share our handy (pun intended) opposable thumbs, but they have “thumbs” (technically referred to opposable toes) on their feet too.
Animals with four legs generally have limbs that are pretty much equal in length and they walk on the same part of each of their feet. Chimpanzees have long arms with long-fingered hands and they bend their fingers underneath, walking on the knuckles of their hands and the flat part of their feet.
One cool thing about knuckle-walking is that it leaves your hands free to carry your dolls:
While chimpanzees are mainly quadrupedal when walking and standing (of course they can also swing through the trees), there are times when they stand up on their feet and sometimes walk bipedally like us humans.
At the sanctuary, a frequent reason to stand up is to spy on the neighbors or spot something at a distance:
Jamie:
Negra:
Jody:
Foxie:
Missy:
Another pretty practical reason to walk bipedally is when your hands or arms are really full:
Jody:
Burrito:
Jamie:
Being short myself, maybe I’m projecting this on to Missy, but I think I stand up straighter and raise up on my tip toes a lot more than less vertically-challenged people, so I equate this to Missy standing up just to be taller once in a while:
Annie, however, is somewhat of an exception. We don’t really know why, but she tends to stand and walk bipedally more often than not when she’s in the grass on Young’s Hill, even when her hands aren’t full and she’s not trying to spy on something at a distance.
Foxie the Chimpanzee and Poppy the Troll
Foxie’s love of troll dolls started over eight years ago when she arrived at Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest. She still loves the old school trolls, but now that there’s a new DreamWorks Animation film called Trolls, and you can bet that Foxie is going to benefit from the marketing.
Foxie likes the songs by Justin Timberlake that are in the trailers.
Her favorite doll so far seems to be Poppy, whose voice in the animated movie is Anna Kendrick. With this description of Poppy, they do sound like kindred spirits.
Tea & Play
Today’s enrichment theme was “tea party” so we took that literally and made two types of tea for the chimps to enjoy after we had finished cleaning their castle.
Post-tea time was spent on important things like diving into the nesting position, staring at a troll doll, and some lazy play with friends. Watch the video with sound.
Who can resist being thoroughly charmed by these chimpanzees?
A Missy in Motion…
Today was a great day!
Way back in the spring, Charlie Nickerson of Troop 80 in Seattle contacted J.B. about doing his eagle scout project to help the sanctuary. We’re not able to say yes to all requests we get from people interested in doing volunteer projects like this, but we had just had a bunch of fire hose donated, so J.B. got Charlie started on the idea of making some fire hose hammocks to add to the interest of Young’s Hill.
A whole group of people joined in the hanging of the two awesome new hammocks, including other members of Troop 80, Shawn (J.B.’s new right-hand maintenance volunteer), John, and two CWU students – Ruth and Kyle.
It was pouring when they arrived this morning, so the chimps didn’t mind not having access to their outdoor habitat. The team worked outside in the wet weather with J.B. while volunteer Rachel and I cleaned up the chimp house.
In addition to the two new hammocks, the group also hung fire hose in various areas on the hill, connecting structures to each other.
Luckily, by the time they were finished with all of this manual labor, the weather had cleared up. So, the hardworking team spread a forage on the hill for the chimps and watched all seven chimpanzees forage for their lunch and explore the new features of their habitat.
I took what seemed like hundreds of photos of the chimps enjoying these new features and foraging, and I’ve narrowed down a couple of series to share in this blog post.
You probably know that we celebrate Jamie’s birthday on Halloween, which is just a few days away, but Missy might have thought all the new fire hose was a present just for her.
I am calling the below series of photos: “A Missy in Motion Tends to be the Best Thing Ever.”
Here is Missy standing next to Annie. Take a moment to admire Missy’s thigh muscles:
In her element, Missy tightrope walking and otherwise using existing and newly hung fire hose to traverse all over the hill:
Later in the day, Missy discovered some food cleverly hidden in new fire hose wrapped around a log post:
Every once in a while, she would stop to rest:
But not for long! Here she is climbing into one of the new hammocks:
I’d say it’s a hit:
This next series of Jamie I am calling, “Perfect Dismount”
A very cleverly hung piece of hose that Jamie couldn’t resist trying out:
Annie may have found her new favorite hangout:
Burrito explored a new hammock by himself later in the day:
And then he peeked at us from the lookout:
Thanks to everyone who helped make the day a great one, including all of you reading and sharing this – your support makes every day great!
