Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest
Hope. Love. Home. Sanctuary
Despite all they’ve been through,
or perhaps because of it,
these seven chimpanzees have become a family.
After decades of isolation
and prolonged periods of fear and uncertainty,
they have found someone to love,
someone to trust,
someone to comfort them in times of need.
If we see ourselves in them,
then perhaps it’s time we accept
that they are our family, too.
Seeing Foxie take a moment to give her doll a hug before heading out for a walk on Young’s Hill.
Watching Negra enjoy a moment of peace and quiet in the greenhouse while the others are outside.
Seeing Burrito torn between playing with his caregiver and keeping an eye on lunch preparations.
Today, the chimps watched from the greenhouse as heavy rainstorms passed through Cle Elum. Rain is a rare occurrence here in the summer and while it puts a damper on the chimps’ outdoor activities, they seemed to welcome its return as much as we did. They curled up next to one another in cozy nests, lulled by the cool, humid air and the steady drum of rain on the greenhouse roof.
It was a very different reaction than the one we witnessed eight years ago, when the rains finally returned to Central Washington after their usual summer hiatus. Then, the chimps were just settling into their new life here at the sanctuary after living for decades in a windowless basement. As the first drops fell, the chimps rushed to the windows and doors to investigate. When the drizzle turned into a steady rain, the chimps let out deafening alarm calls. Alarm calls? At rain? We were momentarily stumped, until we remembered that the Cle Elum Seven hadn’t seen rain in decades – or for some, in their entire lives.
Days like this remind me of how much things have changed over the last eight years. These seven chimps have completely transformed before our very eyes. And while we watched them recover and grow and eventually thrive in sanctuary, their counterparts still in labs were granted new protections, first by the NIH and then by the Fish and Wildlife Service, effectively ending the era of chimpanzee research both in the United States and around the world.
These changes happened far more rapidly than I ever would have imagined. But while we’ve finally nudged the lines of our circle of moral concern ever-so-slightly to include chimpanzees, we still haven’t let go of the mindset that allowed Annie, Burrito, Foxie, Jamie, Jody, Missy, and Negra to be locked away in the first place. That is, that when humans are concerned, the ends always justify the means. This was addressed in a powerful Op-Ed in the New York Times today by Dr. John Gluck, a former primate researcher and thoughtful advocate for our primate cousins. We had the pleasure of receiving a visit from John, along with the sanctuary’s good friend Dr. Hope Ferdowsian, earlier this summer. I urge you to read what he has to say, though I should warn you that the article includes two disturbing images.
When the rain subsided this afternoon, the chimps spilled back onto Young’s Hill. Jamie picked up where she left off, patrolling her territory, this time accompanied by Ellie the Elk. Missy ran and swung and climbed everything in sight. Others searched for food left over from the morning’s breakfast forage. And Negra, as you might have guessed, stayed tucked in her nest, dreaming of dinner. These chimps emerged from the darkness of their laboratory lives and found peace in sanctuary. They, and others like them, are now protected because people fought for them.
The 70,000 primates still in labs are counting on us to do the same for them.
Anna and volunteer Becca got some great footage of the chimps going on the offensive against a snake yesterday. Don’t mess with Foxie!
Primatologist Robert Yerkes once said, “One chimpanzee is no chimpanzee.” Spend a single morning watching the Cle Elum Seven and you will know exactly what he meant.
The thing that originally sparked my interest in chimpanzees was the fact that they could learn sign language. Ape language studies of the ’60s and ’70s not only helped bridge the gap between the complex languages of humans and the seemingly much simpler grunts, barks, and chirps of other animals, but they hinted at a possibility almost too magical to believe: could signing chimpanzees actually tell us what they were thinking?
They could, and they did. Many of us at CSNW were lucky enough to help care for some of these signing chimpanzees during their later years and to converse with them in the process. And never have I been as humbled as I was on my first day of training, when I realized that the chimps signed faster and with a greater vocabulary than I could understand. This was a good way to put a new graduate student in his place.
As amazing as that experience was, however, we ultimately learned an even greater lesson from our mentors: Animals don’t need to learn our language to tell us what they are thinking. We can learn theirs.
Spend enough time around chimps and you start to absorb their mannerisms. You bob your head during greetings and crouch down low when placating a dominant chimp. You extend an arm when you need help and stomp your foot on the ground when initiating a game of chase. You pick up on the subtleties of their facial expressions, covering your top teeth when you smile and pouting your lips in sympathy when someone is upset. And if you’re not too self-conscious, you start to sing along when they pant hoot in excitement, or join in breathy laughter when tickling them with a stick.
Training as a caregiver at CSNW means training in chimp language, because the chimps never stop communicating their thoughts and desires. From the moment we walk in the door in the morning, they are telling us what’s on their minds. For Jamie, it’s all about boots. She can’t wait for her caregivers to don a pair of her favorite cowboy boots and chase her around the chimp house. She tells us what she wants by gazing and pointing toward the boot bin while stomping her feet. She has a mental catalogue of all the boots in her collection and knows which pair she wants, and if we draw up the wrong pair she shakes her head and tells us to try again.
It’s easy to figure out what Jamie wants, though, because she’s so predictable. The same is true for Negra, who claps to prod her caregivers into action at least 30 minutes before each mealtime. Other situations require more thought. Sometimes Burrito greets us exuberantly first thing in the morning and initiates a game of chase. We chase after him for a while until he stops suddenly and begins to blow raspberries while pointing at something just outside the enclosure. Our eyes scan the ground until we finally come across the real reason for his excitement: a piece of food left over from the previous night’s dinner, just out of reach. Missy does something similar, except that her games of chase always end at the window facing the garden, where ripe cherry tomatoes grow just a few feet away. Her hand points towards the garden while her gaze switches back and forth between our eyes and the tomatoes, drawing an imaginary line between the two. The phrase “ulterior motive” had to have been coined by someone who worked with chimpanzees.
Throughout the day we hear updates from the chimps from afar. When a threat bark pierces the silence of an afternoon meal, it means that one of the caregivers has unwittingly violated the chimps’ social order, perhaps by serving food to a low ranking chimpanzee out of turn. Alarm calls can be easily differentiated into degrees of severity – single “hoo” calls mean that one chimp has seen something they can’t quite make sense of, while multiple “waa” calls mean that the group has identified and rallied around a source of danger. Even the “waa” calls can be broken into different levels of intensity, telling you whether they have uncovered a small garter snake or a large, and potentially deadly, rattlesnake.
Closing up at night involves a routine that might sound familiar to anyone with young kids, but instead of “can you read me just one more story” or “can I have a glass of water”, it’s “can you give me just one more troll doll” or “can I have the boots you walked in this morning.” This process of making sure the chimps have everything they want before they go to bed can last for the better part of an hour, depending on their moods, and sometimes involves dumping everything out of the toy bins so that they can pick out exactly what they want. But when you figure out what they want, whether it’s that black pair of boots with the white stitching or the new Dora the Explorer doll, they often let you know with a low moan, while clutching the item gently to their chest. Reminiscent of Chewbacca, the low moan indicates satisfaction, and tells us all is good.
We talk to each other like this all day long and at the end of the day, the only thing left to say is “goodnight”, which in chimp-speak is delivered as a series of soft grunts, pants, and hoo’s known collectively as nest grunts. We caregivers often initiate this as we lock up for the night, and the chimps respond in turn. It’s a subtle and beautiful chorus; a vocalization that began high up in the trees of central Africa but somehow echoes from cozy blanket nests in a small sanctuary in Cle Elum.
It says, “we are all safe now, see you tomorrow,” in a language all their own.
People who have been incarcerated for long periods can have trouble adapting to life outside prison once they are released, a phenomenon we call institutionalization. Chimps are no different.
For the Cle Elum Seven, life in the lab was horrible, but after as much as 35 years it made some kind of sense. The deprivation they endured flipped the world on its head – metal and concrete were familiar and comforting, while grass and open sky would become sources of discomfort and fear. It’s perverse, that these chimpanzees should have to learn to adapt to what was their birthright.
It’s tempting to think of reaching sanctuary as the end of a harrowing journey, but it is only a step in the process. When the chimps first set foot on Young’s Hill, they were scared. The world outside was big and unknown. Eventually, their fear became exhilaration as they explored their new territory. More and more now I think we see in them something akin to appreciation or even reverence for the outdoors.
This process of adaptation continues and will likely never be complete. I think these chimps see themselves as visitors to the outdoors. It’s not their home. They take what they need before returning to the familiar surroundings of their indoor enclosures. But they are each adapting in their own way, and in their own time.
Just look how far they’ve come.
