Here are a few photos of Annie enjoying her potato during lunch. In the first two pictures, I’m pretty sure she is looking up towards her best friend Missy, but I love the sparkles in her eyes!
Annie
Lazy days of summer
Okay, it’s not summer (yet), but we have been having a heatwave in Cle Elum: temperatures in the high 30s and low 40s with lots of sun. As a result, the greenhouse is toasty warm. Here’s Annie enjoying the reprieve from winter and doing a little self-grooming.
Brushing
A quick clip of two friends sharing a quiet moment together:
The New Annie
Diana and Elizabeth have both noted on this blog that Annie seems to be getting more confident. She’s taking food in front of the more dominant chimps – sometimes from more the dominant chimps. And she has begun interacting with chimps other than Missy.
What really amazes me is her newest choice of playmates. In the past, Annie would occasionally attempt to join in on games that other chimps were playing, and it almost always ended badly. It’s like she didn’t know how to read the cues that playmates trade throughout a game. The other chimps would be playing a quiet game of tickle, and Annie would come running in with a slap to the head or a full-on tackle. Someone would get upset and a fight would break out, ending with Annie splayed on the ground in a full-blown, chimp style panic attack. This was especially true when she tried to play with Foxie.
That was the old Annie. The new Annie has realized that there is a world out there beyond Missy. And she seems to be figuring out how to get along with everyone else. Her newest playmate? Foxie. Go figure.
Greenhouse play
Here’s the video I promised in yesterday’s blog post. My favorite part is when Annie joins in the play (using her favorite blanket-swinging method of play initiation), something she’s doing more and more as her confidence continues to grow (read Diana’s thoughts on the changes we’ve seen in Annie here.)
Distractions
I’m going to be honest: Sometimes it’s just more fun to watch the chimpanzees play than it is to scrub the playroom. JB and I had a hard time making any significant progress this morning because the chimps were on fire (figuratively speaking)! We had some serious sun today, and relatively mild temperatures, which meant the greenhouse was warm and inviting. Foxie, Missy, and a troll doll had a lengthy play session on and around one of the window ledges; I’ll do my best to post that footage tomorrow.
For now, here’s a video of Annie reprising her stand-on-Missy game from this past summer (see that video here).
Imaginary play
This morning, while Elizabeth and I were cleaning the playroom, Annie was sitting in the window. She playfully opened her mouth for a “drink of water” through the glass. She’s not the only chimpanzee at CSNW that we have witnessed play this game. We caught a short clip of it:
This reminded me of something I saw, but failed to get on camera a few weeks ago. Jamie was sitting on this small toy horse and scooting along the playroom floor. She then lifted her leg up high and over in an exaggerated dismount. Two things stood out to me- the first was how interesting it is to me that chimps engage in this type of pretend play, and second- how truly little we know about the chimps’ histories. She seemed to know exactly what she was doing when she “dismounted”. We suspect she was a “pet” prior to the lab, but was she raised by a cowboy (hence the boot obsession?), did she just see this on TV?, or was she taught to ride a horse at some point? We may never know, but it was a fascinating moment none the less.
Here’s a photo of the horse, for scale. 🙂
