Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest
Hope. Love. Home. Sanctuary
If you’re having a bad day, this should make you feel better:
Amazingly, this is only the second best video of chimps holding hands that you will see this week. If you haven’t yet, check out this story about Terry and Jeannie from our friends at Save the Chimps.
Many of you know that Jamie likes to be accompanied by a caregiver when she patrols Young’s Hill, her 2-acre enclosure. It’s the best part of the job, in my opinion – fresh air, exercise, and some quality bonding time between chimps and the humans that care for them. And if I’m being honest, it’s just nice to feel needed once and a while.
But it looks like us humans won’t be needed much longer.
This morning, Jamie and Burrito took a walk around the hill with our neighborhood elk, Ellie. This wasn’t the type of patrol we typically see in response to an intruder – Jamie wasn’t aggressive or even particularly vigilant. In fact, it looked to me like the same leisurely stroll that we take with Jamie every day…I mean, used to take every day. Before Ellie took over.
At least Jamie still needs us to clean her enclosures. For now.
Caring for former research chimps can be a balancing act at times. We don’t want to rush them into anything they’re not ready for, and considering what they’ve been through, it’s no surprise that some would have a hard time adjusting to certain aspects of life in sanctuary. For example, some former lab chimps fail to make nests like their wild counterparts and even go as far as clearing blankets and other bedding out of the way so that they can lay down on the hard concrete floor. Others refuse to set foot on grass, clinging instead to metal caging and bars wherever possible. The lab environment they came from was harsh but it was familiar. For the Cle Elum Seven, it was all they knew for as much as 35 years.
Negra is a good example of this kind of institutionalization. For decades she had no choice but to follow the same routine: Sleep, eat, repeat. What else is there to do when you live indoors in a cage all by yourself? Here at CSNW, Negra still finds comfort in that routine, only now she sleeps on a mountain of soft blankets and eats a huge variety of fresh foods as well as her beloved night bags. Still, if she had her way, nearly every day would be the same: eat, sleep, repeat.
But life in sanctuary offers so much more and it would be a shame if Negra didn’t get to take advantage of it. The trick is to find a way to nudge chimps like Negra toward healthier and more interesting choices without causing them undue stress. Sunlight and exercise are good for Negra, even though she might think otherwise. So each day, we try to get her to expand her horizons and push the boundaries of her comfort zone, even if it’s just by a little bit. Today, for example, we put some of her favorite foods out on the hill as a forage. And guess who was first out the door? More specifically, guess who elbowed her way to the front of the line so she could be first out the door?
Negra has come so far since her rescue in 2008. All she needed was freedom of choice, a lot of patience, and a little nudge now and again.
No matter how long you work at a sanctuary or how well you know the chimps, there are still moments that take your breath away. Jody, Foxie, Jamie, and Burrito spent decades living in isolation in barren laboratory cages. Today, they are free to patrol their territory as a family.
If the chimps had their way, they’d eat all day long. Burrito would be unstoppable. Negra would probably forego blankets entirely and just make huge nests out of bread and peanuts so that she would never have to get out of bed again. But overeating is not usually conducive to good health, so for their sake we try to balance these two competing interests as best we can.
Thankfully, there’s a miracle diet food that helps keep chimps happy and healthy: alfalfa. Not just alfalfa, but also bamboo, grape vines, timothy hay, cattails – things that we collectively refer to as “browse”. Chimps love browse, but most browse plants are too fibrous to be digested properly, so they either pass right through or the chimps spit them out after a thorough chewing. Browse makes it possible for chimps to chew to their hearts’ content without eating a lot of calories.
In the summer and fall, many types of browse grow naturally in the chimps’ two-acre enclosure, which allows them to grab a snack anytime they like. Naturally occurring browse is harder to find during the winter, so we make sure to provide Burrito and his family with store-bought treats like alfalfa cubes on a regular basis:
One Green Planet is featuring an article today by our very own Diana Goodrich, in which she shares a little of what she has learned from our chimpanzee friends.
Along those same lines, here’s a tip from Annie on maintaining that youthful glow:
Introductions. In the chimp sanctuary world, no word is as simultaneously exciting and terrifying.
Introductions occur anytime you form a social group from unfamiliar individuals. They are exciting because chimps are social creatures, and they benefit greatly from living in groups, especially groups that are large and diverse. And they are terrifying because chimpanzees can be incredibly aggressive and they don’t always welcome new members with open arms.
As many of you know, Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest is in the process of expanding. Our plan is to add a new wing to the facility to accommodate an additional group, but we also hope to add new members to the Cle Elum Seven family. So what can we expect when we introduce new chimps to this group that has been together for nearly a decade?
Let’s start with the good news. According to the literature, over 85% of documented introductions have been successful. In studies like these, an introduction is considered a success when a chimp is integrated into the group and remains there for at least one to two months.
Now, the bad news. Even when introductions are successful, the process can be ugly. How ugly? Let me explain it this way: the introduction protocol from a progressive and reputable zoo recommends that introductions be stopped immediately only in cases of “severe injuries that impede locomotion, loss of limb function, severe gaping wounds with bone(s) exposed, severe blood loss, [or] compromised state of consciousness.” According to the same document, a discussion about stopping the introduction may be warranted in situations of “extreme fatigue or severe loss of appetite, relentless pursuit of an individual such that the individual can’t eat, sleep, etc…[or] mental shutdown.”
Imagine if we applied these criteria to humans…
How was Billy’s first day of school?
Well, Ricky bit half of his ear off, the other kids chased him up and down the hallway all morning, and he got trapped at the top of the jungle gym for an hour during recess by a raging hoard of 6-year-olds, but by lunchtime they allowed him come down and eat a few tater tots off the floor. So, all in all, things are going pretty well!
The thing is, chimps are not humans, and we need to judge their interactions by a different standard. It’s not as cold and heartless as it may seem because if we separated them at the first sign of aggression, there would be very few chimps living in groups. The Cle Elum Seven are a good example of this. They’re all missing bits and pieces of ears, fingers, and toes from fights during their time in the lab and here at the sanctuary. But by and large, they’ve learned to get along, and they’ll do the same when it comes time to add someone new to the mix.
Despite all the fighting and potential for injury, chimps will usually work things out if we allow them to. And when they do, they get to take back a little piece of the life they should have known in the wild.
