Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest
Hope. Love. Home. Sanctuary
Seth Webster sponsored today for his wife Sharon Discorfano. Says Seth: “Inspired and amazed at all the time and effort she puts toward helping non-human animals of all kinds, I wanted to sponsor a day at the Chimpanzee Sanctuary to honor, on our 7th wedding anniversary, all of the positive change Sharon has brought for so many, and for the light she has brought into my life.”
Happy Anniversary Sharon and Seth!
The wind and the rain have kept the chimps inside for most of the day, so Jody and Foxie played quietly near the door to Young’s Hill, waiting for an opportunity to go out.
This is another example of how the chimps change their style of play to suit their playmate. Earlier in the day, Foxie was running, leaping, spinning, and swinging with joy when she got her favorite Dora doll back. But Foxie knows that Jody lives life at a slower pace than she does, so she toned it down a bit.
The chimps spend a good deal of each day grooming. Grooming serves a hygienic function, but it also helps to strengthen social bonds between individuals. In some ways, grooming is the glue that holds the group together.
I managed to find the missing footage taken from the GoPro camera earlier this week. I think it’s interesting to see how the chimps see the world from within their enclosure.
As Jackie mentioned, most of the new posts that you can see in this video will be used to support a wood and fire hose bridge made by the Boy Scouts. While the scouts were working on this over the weekend, we put in about 20 other posts that will one day become climbing structures, tree houses, and crow’s nest lookouts. The money for some of these projects was donated during the fund-a-need portion of last year’s auction. Our goal is to connect all of the structures on Young’s Hill with bridges, beams, and fire hose so that the chimps can move around the two-acre enclosure without having to set foot on the ground.
This sanctuary is definitely a work in progress. But I mean that in a good way, in that we will always add new things and change others to keep life interesting for the chimps.
One of our goals as a sanctuary is to give the chimps as much independence and autonomy as we can, given the inherent limitations of captivity. So we’re thrilled to see them finding their own food on Young’s Hill. Right now, their favorites include grass, dandelion leaves, and prickly lettuce. There are two bamboo groves on the hill, but the chimps haven’t taken much of an interest in eating them as of yet (climbing them is a different story). Of course, none of this will take the place of the meals we serve throughout the day, but it’s nice that the chimps can head out and grab a light snack whenever they want.
Recently, an infant chimpanzee at the L.A. Zoo was killed by an adult member of the troop in full view of zoo visitors. A few days later, a student volunteering at the Chimp Eden sanctuary in South Africa was pulled into an enclosure and attacked by two adult male chimpanzees. Both incidents served as startling reminders of the capacity for violence in our closest relatives and have left many people wondering what makes chimpanzees commit such severe acts of aggression.
Unfortunately, while incidents like these are rare, they are not abnormal. Put simply, violence is a fact of life in chimpanzee society. While males typically grab all the attention with their aggressive dominance struggles and their lethal intergroup raids, females also kill on occasion, with infants and other adult females being their most likely victims. In chimpanzee communities, severe aggression can be a means to reduce or prevent resource competition. This can result in the killing of members of other communities, as well as immigrant females and even infants within the troop. In some cases, the killing of an infant can increase mating opportunities for males. For instance, if a female gives birth, she will not enter estrus for another four to five years while she nurses and raises her new child. If that child dies, however, she will quickly become receptive again. Thus, there can be an incentive for a male who is not the parent to kill the infant so that he can mate with the mother (this is one reason primatologists believe that females may try to confuse paternity).
Violent behavior can serve many functions in chimpanzee society. What functions did these incidents at the L.A. Zoo and Chimp Eden serve? Honestly, we don’t know. It’s much easier to offer an evolutionary explanation for why violence exists in general than it is to explain specific acts.
As caregivers for captive chimpanzees, we witness aggressive behavior on a daily basis. Sometimes the motivation behind it is clear; other times we are left scratching our heads. The way I think about it is this: evolution has endowed chimpanzees with certain tendencies for aggressive behavior, but it does not control how those tendencies are applied. Aggression towards non-group members in the wild can help chimpanzees defend territory and the resources located therein. But that same aggressive tendency can also result in an attack on the very people trying to care for them in captivity.
All we really know is that violence in chimpanzees is not an aberration, nor is it all they are capable of. In fact, one of the reasons why we might be uncomfortable with chimpanzee violence is that it hits a little too close to home. To be sure, aggression in chimpanzees is shocking in its sheer physicality – teeth and fists instead of knives and guns. But even though chimpanzees exhibit higher rates of aggression overall, rates of lethal violence in chimpanzees are similar to those in some human societies. In some ways, we are more alike than we’d like to believe.
One of the things that I like about the GoPro camera is that you can hear some of the sounds that the chimps are making when they are way out on the hill. In this video, you can hear food grunts from Jamie and Jody and of course a couple of Burrito’s famous food squeaks.
You can also hear Foxie’s breathy panting as she reassures Burrito. Chimps will often reassure one another with vocalizations like this, as well as through touch and embrace, when the potential for conflict exists. If there is a limited resource, like nuts and seeds spread on the ground on Young’s Hill, the chimps will sometimes try to make nice before a conflict erupts over who stole food from whom, in an effort to prevent this kind of conflict. Normally, the chimp receiving the reassurance would provide some sort of acknowledgement, but that’s not Burrito’s style – he prefers to close his eyes and pretend that uncomfortable situations don’t exist.
