Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

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chimp enrichment

Jody and the Bamboo

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Jody loves to harvest her own plants from Young’s Hill. In addition to a variety of wild plants that grow out there, we have planted several groves of bamboo generously donated by Provitro Biosciences. While Missy appreciates the bamboo for its climbing potential, Jody prefers to break off shoots and eat the leaves.

I snapped the following photos the other day when Jody brought this bamboo inside to enjoy.

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And as I was typing this blog post, Jody dragged this giant piece of bamboo in from outside. Let’s hope the bamboo survives Jody’s love.

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Interrupted play

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Today Burrito and Foxie were wrestling and chasing and just being super playful in the greenhouse. Their laughter got to be pretty loud, and I think it caught Jamie’s attention…

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…She came out to see what was going on, and stepped right between Burrito and Foxie to interrupt their play.

This is a very boss-like thing to do in chimp society. We (lovingly) refer to Jamie as the “party police” because of instances like this.

But this time, she didn’t cease all playing—instead, she immediately started wrestling with Foxie and began to play “tug-o-troll” with her.

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Lots and lots of paper

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We’ve posted about the enrichment theme “lots of paper” before, but it never gets old with the chimps. They love it, so we try to work that theme into each month—so long as we have extra paper to spare. Yesterday we had plenty, including a bunch of paper from some boxes that were shipped from Amazon when people sent us supplies we needed from our wishlist. You probably didn’t know you were helping us stock the shelves AND enriching the chimps at the same time did you? 🙂

Jamie definitely appreciated the extra paper, and we threw in some crepe paper, toilet paper, and a big roll of red paper for additional nesting materials. She built the biggest paper nest I’ve seen! It was an all day project that she returned to a few times to perfect her comfy spot.

First, she started with the brown paper from the Amazon boxes and added the giant roll of red paper.

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She abandoned it at one point (probably to go on a perimeter walk of Young’s Hill) and you can see just how elaborate it is:

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Later she returned and added some toilet paper, which she reportedly had wrapped around her like a mummy but when the paparazzi (Elizabeth) arrived she quickly brushed it off herself. The toilet paper added a nice softness to the nest and she curled up with some boots to take a mid-day nap.

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Relaxing

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I found some photos on the computer taken by Elizabeth and Lisa a few days ago. Just looking at these pictures makes me feel so relaxed!

Jamie

Burrito

Missy

Foxie

More play communication

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Just earlier this week I posted a video I caught of Foxie using exaggerated signals to get Negra to play with her. Today, it was Missy initiating the play with Foxie! And of course, Foxie couldn’t resist.

Play, play, play

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Annie and Missy are quite well-known for their excited games of chase and wrestling throughout the chimp house. Negra, however, isn’t always the most likely play partner—and when she does play, she’s got her own speed (kinda slow). This time Negra was keeping up with the experts!

This video is a little longer than some of our others but I thought you wouldn’t want to miss a second of this fun play session. Thanks again to Patty W. for sponsoring today for us and for being Negra’s Pal!

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