Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

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chimp enrichment

Let’s Talk About Enrichment

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Taking care of chimpanzees is more than cleaning enclosures and serving them meals. There’s a lot more that goes into it. We also ensure the chimpanzees are well mentally. This is usually through the form of enrichment. Enrichment is a way to provide mental stimulation and promote natural behaviors. In layman’s terms, enrichment is a way to try to curb boredom. When animals become bored, some abnormal or stressed-related behaviors can start to develop.

Here, we try very hard to keep all 16 residents enriched to the best of our abilities. But what does that look like? Traditionally in the animal care field, enrichment comes in a few staple categories:

  • Cognitive
  • Physical Habitat
  • Social
  • Food
  • Sensory

Cognitive enrichment is the form of enrichment you have seen here many times. These are the food puzzles the chimpanzees get throughout the day. These are the toys some interact with. This is a way for the chimpanzees problem solve and give them a level of control of their environment. With the food puzzles, its a way to problem solve a situation in order to achieve the reward.

Willy B engaging with a Hanging Frisbee puzzle. Between each Frisbee is a smear of peanut butter. This puzzle makes Willy B engage with the Frisbees by searching through the stacks for the peanut butter.
Foxie strategizing how to extract the peanuts in the Boomer Ball. Each chimpanzee has their own way of extracting the peanuts from these. Some shake them until the peanuts eventually fall out. Some try to fish them out with a tool. While some, like Foxie, tries to dig them out with her fingers.
Jamie wearing a Troll Scarf. We never tell the chimpanzees how to interact with their enrichment or tell them to wear clothes. That would defeat the purpose of sanctuary. With Troll Scarves though, Jamie usually likes to wear them around.
Burrito plays with a giant orange ball. Burrito particularly loves rolling these around and making as much noise as possible with them.

Physical Habitat is the how the enclosure is set up. Not only should an enclosure probably look visible appealing for the chimpanzees, but it should be functional as well. Young’s Hill has a plethora of structures the chimpanzees can climb, swing, and sit on to look out on to the surrounding areas. In the indoor enclosures, firehose is a great addition to their physical habitat.

Lucky is a big fan of lounging around or sitting on the firehose when she is inside.

In the two new playrooms and greenhouses currently occupied by Willy B’s group and Cy’s group, there are two artificial trees the chimpanzees can climb up and relax on their platforms.

Terry right before he began his ascension up the artificial tree in his greenhouse.
Honey B and Mave grooming on the “leaf” platforms of the artificial tree in their playroom.

Social enrichment is the relationship the chimpanzees have with others, chimpanzees and humans. It can be enriching to interact with a chimpanzee from another group, even if it is just through the window.

Jamie and Burrito watching Honey B’s group in the outdoor Chute.

As you know, we have been in the process of integrating Cy and Willy B’s group into one. Though these times can be stressful, seeing some of the chimpanzees come together and form bonds is the most heartwarming feeling a caregiver can get.

Dora being play dragged by Honey B.
Cy and Willy B grooming during one of their one-on-one meetings. Willy B and Cy became fast friends and always seek each other out. Just yesterday we were serving dinner and Cy and Willy B were both unusually absent. I went to find them, and found them at the new window to each other in the Greenhouses.

Food can be exciting and enriching, but food on it’s own is just something you eat to satisfy an empty belly. What can make food more enriching is introducing new foods or presenting it in new ways. We are continuously trying to find new foods to introduce to the chimpanzees. We also try to present the food in different ways. Besides hand serving we also set up forages. Typically when the weather is nice, we set up forages on Young’s Hill. This promotes a chimpanzee’s natural behavior to move around and search for their food.

Jamie grabs all that she can as she searches Young’s Hill for food.

Another type of forage presented in an exciting way is the parties we throw.

Here are some photos from 2021 Jamieween!
Shrunken apple heads!
The pomegranate-o-lanterns from 2020!

Sensory enrichment includes those which allow the chimpanzees to utilize their sense of touch, smell, auditory, and vision. We try to provide them with novel ways to utilize these senses.

One of the touch enrichment we use is play sand. Here you can see an imprint of Honey B’s foot in the sand box. Every so often, we would see Honey B, Jamie, and some of the others just grab a handful of sand and let it sift through their fingers.

As some know, Willy B loves screen time. This is one way we provide him with both a visual and auditory enrichment.

Caregiver Sam showing Willy B some videos of orangutans a few months ago. He really seems to love watching videos of orangutans.
While Sam showed Willy B some videos, I showed Honey B and Mave some videos of our friends at Center for Great Apes.
These photos were courtesy of caregiver Sofia.

Is everything we do a hit? No. Is what is good for one group good for the other? No. Do we continuously try to find ways to ensure every chimpanzee is enriched based on their personal preference and likes? Absolutely! Though this can be a very challenging task to cater enrichment for 16 very different personalities and likes, it is absolutely worth it. It is part of the job I personally love.

Here are some bonus photos I took of Rayne today:

And Dora!

The Bees Knees

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The thing about Honey B is that she really is the bees knees. I admire Honey B’s spontaneous nature, her silly demeanor, and when she sets her mind on something she won’t let anything get in the way. Honey B decided that yesterday front room 7 did not need to be cleaned. She was kind of right as it really just had toys and a lot of paper, just the way she likes it. However, today I really wanted to clean it for not just Honey B, but for Mave and Willy B too. It didn’t look promising at first, but eventually she shifted over for us.

Honey B in front room 7, just the way she likes it:

After all the front rooms were cleaned we handed Honey B and Mave extra rolls of wrapping paper from their Christmas party!

Mave was very pleased about this!

I will leave you with one last Honey Bees photos.

Cold Snap

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The Pacific Northwest is experiencing a cold snap this week. Today the high is 18ºF with a low of 5ºF tonight. With temperatures such as these, the chimpanzees have sought refuge in the upstairs areas of their respective playrooms where it is nice and warm. They are all napping as I write this.

With days like today, it can be difficult to get photos of the chimpanzees. The upstairs areas are notoriously difficult (read pretty much impossible) to take photos of. I was able to get a few opportunistically throughout the afternoon, mostly during lunch when they all came down.

Terry eating his carrot during lunch.
Willy B working up his display toward Cy’s group during lunch service.
Dora waiting for her turn to be served her lunch.
Rayne eating her primate chow on the highest leaf platform on the tree in her playroom.
Mave and Honey B grooming after lunch.
Mave!

The Eve of the Eve

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Holiday preparations continue as caregiver elves now take on the challenge of wrapping at record pace all the toys that were so nicely donated by our amazing supporters. For the chimps today is just a normal day. Willy B, Honey B and Mave got some hanging puzzles as enrichment this morning to encourage foraging behaviors. Willy B was all about it!

Here’s two sequences of Willy B getting going nuts about nuts!

Sequence #1

Goal achieved

Sequence #2

Goal achieved

Willy B about to catch an almond as it falls

Mave was also very excited about nuts

CSI: Chimp House

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One of the many reasons why chimpanzees should never be pets is their natural destructive behavior. On the daily basis we enter enclosures for cleaning and find destroyed toys, ripped blankets, broken night time enrichment, and on many occasions stuffed animals with severed limbs and stuffing coming out. This is why we follow rigorous rules that dictate the type enrichment and toys that each group is allowed to have. Ranging from choking hazards, to possible obstructions if ingested each item is checked by at least two caregivers before the item is placed inside an enclosure to ensure that the chimpanzees, as individuals and as groups will be safe. Every item that is placed inside is potentially going to be destroyed, and sometimes we encounter crime scenes that may never be solved. I mean we could, we can just watch security footage, but working around mysteries is more intriguing.

Case #1

First on the scene: Special Agent de Bree

Victim: Stuffed teddy bear

Cause of death: Severe stuffingloss by limb amputation and decapitation. Strangulation has not been ruled out.

Location: Greenhouse 1

Evidence collected: Plaid ribbon scarf

Case #2

First on the scene: Special Agent Castro-Loza

Victim: Stuffed tiger

Cause of death: Severe stuffingloss by amputation of left hind leg and tail.

Location: Front Room 3

Evidence collected: Unopened pumpkin seed

Number of suspects: 7

But three individuals matched our previous offense data base. Jamie, Annie, and Burrito are on the top of the suspect list pending investigation and forensic analysis.

Jamie de-stuffing a lion

Click here to access our Amazon Wish List with an assortment of approved enrichment. The Holiday list is up!!!

Click here to view our Enrichment Database.

The Nifty Fifty

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I’m sure all of you are familiar with the Lucky Six by now, but do you know the Nifty Fifty?

Before I get any further ahead, I need to clarify something. Y’all may be disappointed, but we don’t currently have any plans to rescue a group of fifty chimpanzees. (Not anytime soon, at least.) The colloquial term “Nifty Fifty” refers to something a little less exciting.

The Nifty Fifty is a type of camera lens.

More specifically, photographers refer to 50mm prime (fixed) lenses as “nifty fifties” because they’re relatively inexpensive, versatile, lightweight and sharp (id est, nifty).

By sacrificing the mechanical components required to zoom in on a subject, prime lenses can be built with a larger aperture* (usually f/1.4 or 1.8) while retaining their relatively affordable price and compact size. This trade-off is particularly beneficial in poorly-lit conditions, but it also creates a shallow depth of field that can produce a bokeh effect (an aesthetically-pleasing background blur that makes the subject stand out). Given all these qualities, the 50mm prime is a staple of event, travel, studio, and street photographers. It’s not bad for shooting landscapes, either!

*For those of you who may be new to this topic, aperture, shutter speed, and ISO/sensitivity are the three main variables that photographers adjust to get the desired exposure. The aperture setting is the camera’s equivalent to the dilation of your eye’s pupil; when the aperture is opened wide, more light reaches the sensor at any given shutter speed or sensitivity, resulting in a brighter image.

Normally, the first lenses we caregivers reach for in the morning are the heavier telephotos that let us zoom in on the chimpanzees from afar. These lenses are particularly useful when the chimps are lounging on the upper decks of the greenhouse enclosures or foraging outside in Young’s Hill. They’re not quite as effective indoors, however, since they have comparatively small apertures that limit the passage of light to the sensor.

Last week, the weather was foggy, chilly and wet, and the sanctuary’s primate residents chose to spend more time lounging and socializing in the heated indoor areas. With the chimps hanging out in close proximity and limited sunlight coming in through the windows and overhead skylights, I decided to use the 50mm “nifty fifty” lens to get some portraits for the blog. Fortunately, some of the chimps let me photograph them while they perused their daily enrichment and made blanket nests in the cozy front rooms.

Cy
Dora
Gordo
Honey B
Rayne
Gordo
Dora

When we’re holding the camera lens (or smartphone) flush against the caging, it’s easy to forget that there’s steel mesh between us. For some perspective on this, I recommend revisiting one of Diana’s posts from long ago: Caging is OK.

Caregiver/Vet Assistant Sofia and Terry

Safely shooting through the caging is one of the most difficult aspects of photographing chimps. One benefit of the wide aperture on the aforementioned Nifty Fifty is that it can blur out a barrier even when sections of it are obstructing the image. Sometimes, this effect even creates a halo-like frame around a chimpanzee’s face. In my opinion, it’s a cool way of highlighting each chimps’ unique expressions while subtly reminding you that the barriers are there. In these photos of Jody and Annie, you can see the caging but it’s not drawing your attention like it would if it was sharply in focus.

Jody
Annie

One slow afternoon, I sat with half-sisters Lucky and Rayne for a few minutes and let them each observe their reflections in the camera lens. They were both enthralled by the shiny iridescence of the optical pieces, the bizarre motion of my fingertips around the camera’s other controls, and the absurd positions I put myself in to get the compositions I wanted. Their inquisitive stares led to some striking “eye contact” with the lens, and I was pleased with how each series captured pieces of their quirky personalities.

Lucky was the first to approach and spent the whole session looking down at me with skepticism. Typical.

Rayne was munching on a paper wadge when we started, but she eventually spit it out so she could examine her own teeth in the reflection.

Finally, here are a couple more shots I took with the 50mm this past week. Thanks for scrolling down this far!

Honey
The Hay Barn
Meredith
The view looking northwest towards Cle Elum
Nutmeg
Barn Kitty

 

 

Second Spring

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We humans talk about weather a lot, often marveling at even the predictable and banal. Like me today remarking at the wind gusts, “that’s some wind out there!”

The weather ties everyone to nature, even those who live in jungles made of concrete. It reminds us that we are not, in fact, in control of everything.

After a long and dry summer here at the sanctuary, the fall rains and cloud-filled days felt abrupt and at times a little oppressive. But the plants almost immediately showed their gratitude, making parts of the landscape look like a second spring. The grass sprung from the ground and the grazing animals filled their bellies with this earthly gift.

Today, the skies were clear and the sun bathed the landscape, quickly urging yesterday’s snow to feed the plants some more.

Even the chimps seemed to be operating under the rules of spring, with Jamie insisting I go on two walks with her in a row. One where five other chimpanzees joined, and one that was just the two of us.

On this second walk, with the warm rays of the sun tempering the wind, Jamie was in no hurry. She stopped to inspect a new log placed to brace one of the structures, and then sat on an outpost of that structure, gazing over her kingdom.

As I waited for her signal to continue, I marveled at the signs of plant life emerging amid summer’s leftover debris.

Jamie had me bring one of her new favorite boots on the walk with her. Luckily, she allowed me to wear my own boots and, instead, carry her star-spangled treasure.

As we continued on our walk, I kept looking at the ground and was surprised to see a brazen dandelion in bloom, another reminder of all the plant life under the surface, at the ready for the right conditions to show itself.

When I returned to the chimp house, I looked at the raspberry bushes and noticed new growth, taking one last giant photosynthetic gulp of the season.

Going around to see the six chimpanzees who arrived just shy of five months ago, I found them too soaking in the sun in the shelter of their newly paneled greenhouse.

It’s a little funny that we refer to these areas as greenhouses, a term usually reserved for shelters that allow plants to thrive even when the outside conditions wouldn’t allow the same, and not generally used to refer to shelters for nature’s more mobile kingdom. Today, however, the term seemed more than apt.

While not photosynthesizing, the chimpanzees were certainly soaking in the sun and perhaps storing some energy for future use.

Dora
Rayne
Rayne’s feet
Gordo
Terry