chimp

Mostly Quiet Day

January 26, 2022 by Kelsi

It’s that time of year when it’s cold outside and the chimps are hard to find. It was a relatively quiet day, of course as I write this blog I can hear the three groups starting to shout back and forth to one another, but that is to be expected with sixteen chimpanzees. The chimps spent most of their day grooming and nesting in high places, so capturing photos were few and far between. However, we can always find Honey B in the front rooms! Honey B and Mave spent the morning napping close to each other or grooming quietly with one another. Please enjoy these images of Mave and Honey B, I really tried to get more photos!

Cy thought you might want to know we just added some magazine subscriptions to the Amazon wish list!

The Perks of Be(friend)ing a Wallflower

January 24, 2022 by Anthony

Not all of the chimps like to be in front of the camera lens equally. Lucky and Willy B, for example, will scooch right up to you and your electronic device with gusto. Others prefer to nonchalantly observe the photographer from an intermediate distance, and a few chimps will even try to sternly poke the camera lens when they’re not in the mood for a portrait session.

Then, there’s Gordo.

Lately, I’ve been making a conscious effort to get portraits of the individuals who spend less time in the spotlight, and Gordo has been the most challenging of that bunch.

Gordo is a wallflower. Despite getting along with chimpanzee companions and human caregivers alike, he exhibits some introverted tendencies. It seems like his ideal afternoon would probably be spent lounging quietly on a lofted platform with an enrichment puzzle in his hands, avoiding drama and staying out of the limelight. This makes him one of the more difficult chimpanzees to photograph.

A couple weeks ago, I saw Gordo laying among his group-mates in the indoor front rooms. Everyone was avidly grooming each other, as they tend to do in the downtime that follows breakfast. Gordo was serenely looking down the hallway, clasping his feet and soaking up the warmth from the heated floors, and we eventually made eye contact. I nodded reassuringly, and he kept staring back. I slowly reached for the camera hanging around my neck and raised it up to eye level as if to ask “can I take your picture?”

Gordo coolly remained where he was and allowed me to approach. I gently knelt in by the caging, brought the viewfinder up to my right eye, and turned the focus ring until Gordo’s auburn eyes and platinum goatee were visible in sharp detail. After I got a couple good shots, I put the camera down and simply sat in Gordo’s proximity for a little bit, enjoying the moment. It wasn’t the fervent grooming or exuberant play that we associate with the sanctuary’s more extroverted residents, but his acceptance made my day nonetheless.

Pretty Fly for a Shy Guy

January 19, 2022 by Kelsi

This is Mave.

And this is Gordo.

Today we continued introductions by doing a one on one with Mave and Gordo. It has been a while since either chimp has done an intro, especially Gordo. He just never seems to be around when we shift for intros, but today he just waltzed into the Mezzanine and I closed the door. Gordo and Mave have met before through other intros, but today was the first time they both were really interactive with each other! When they saw each other they immediately met at the mesh to start grooming. I was waiting for a natural break between them to open the door, but I think they could have sat and groomed each other for hours. Eventually, we opened the door and they greeted each other warmly, but separated for some time. Gordo is a shy guy, so we decided maybe they need alone time. We stepped into the foyer to watch on the camera and within a few minutes they started grooming and playing. Gordo has always seemed to admire Mave from afar so we just assumed in intros that they would interact a lot, but the first few times they would greet and groom each other and then they wouldn’t interact very much after. This intro is such an improvement to their other meet ups and they spent the whole afternoon together.

Bonus photos of chimps in a comfy warm greenhouses!

Honey B(adger) Don’t Care

January 17, 2022 by Anthony

As many of you know, we’ve been working around Honey B’s odd preferences this winter. She’s a strong-willed individual who voraciously defends her zone of control (which Willy B will attest to). Whatever everyone’s plans are for the day, she has a tendency to shake them up.

Today, Honey B brought more of that same energy.

As she frequently does, Honey declined to shift into the playroom and greenhouse after we cleaned them this morning. Instead, she opted to remain in her beloved front rooms, thus preventing us from servicing them all simultaneously. She watched indifferently as the others rushed out into the larger enclosures.

We’re not sure why Honey B chooses to stay in the smaller rooms; we’ve discussed several hypotheses, all of them equally plausible. Perhaps she prefers cozy spaces, enjoys watching the caregivers clean around her, or appreciates a few moments of seclusion from the other chimps. It’s also possible that she simply likes to introduce a little neutral chaos into our otherwise organized routine. We’ve seen her do just that on multiple occasions.

Whatever her reasoning may be, it’s interesting to watch how this mischievous chimp spends her time apart from the group. Today, she literally hung out in Front Room 7 as I swept, sprayed, scrubbed, rinsed and squeegeed the adjacent areas.

For the first few minutes, Honey B playfully swung on the firehose vines and made an earnest effort to dismantle the fasteners holding them together. Then, she found a toy brush to sweep some nut shells into a small pile. After that, she made a nest in the corner and lounged peacefully as I added fresh blankets and enrichment items to the other rooms.

As far as chimpanzee personalities go, Honey B is definitely on the more human-oriented end of the spectrum. Fortunately, she is also relatively well-adjusted to sharing space with familiar chimps. When I reunited her with her companions after cleaning the rest of their spaces, Honey B politely greeted Mave and Willy B before carrying on with her business elsewhere. All the residents of that wing enjoyed lunch service in their usual configuration and then dispersed out to the playrooms and greenhouses for some afternoon grooming.

Now, as I’m putting the finishing touches on this blog post, I keep glancing over at the new monitors that show our security camera feed. Honey B was just playfully interacting with Terry across the double barrier that separates their respective greenhouse enclosures. I could tell that it was going well by Terry’s exuberant bounces and head nods. They’ve come quite far from their first meeting, during which Honey B went all “honey badger” on poor unsuspecting Terry.

Whether she’s being asked to shift to another area or being introduced to a new friend, Honey B never lets things get boring around here.

P.S. If you didn’t get the “honey badger” reference and are feeling adventurous, you should do a YouTube search about them. I’m referring to the 2011 video with 98 million views. I’d post the link but the language used in the title is absolutely NSFW and thus not safe for the blog either…

For the Chow!

January 14, 2022 by Kelsi

This morning Negra thought we should all go back to bed! Sometimes, no amount of peanuts is worth it, but chow… chow can be motivating!

Negra tried really hard to keep her eyes open.

But the grogginess had overcome her.

Yet, she still tried her best to wake up! She could hear the smoothies being blended and the chow being counted!

For the chow Negra blinked her eyes open!

But alas she closed her eyes again!

One bonus of Rayne with a mouth full of chow!

Jump Jump

January 12, 2022 by Kelsi

As we have discussed many times, Cy is an avid reader. With some kind donations of Shutterfly gift-cards we finally made Cy his book! The pages were filled with Mave’s group, Jamie’s group, the cattle, and of course lots of spreads of Willy B. Cy is constantly flipping through magazines and we have never seen him so startled that he jumps, but when he saw the pictures of the cattle he jumped out of his skin! The first time he even made me jump! Eventually, Rayne took care of it for him and ripped the book up. She is a true friend! Since Cy’s new book didn’t work out, we are running dangerously low on magazines. Cy has been dying to get his hands on some People magazines! If anyone has clean magazines they could spare, we (Cy) would greatly appreciate it!

Work Hard, Display Hard

January 10, 2022 by Anthony

Originally, I planned on writing a blog post for today by following my classic recipe of egregiously bad puns, unnecessary history/science lessons, and some recent photographs of the sanctuary and its residents. In particular, I was going to share a series of images that would convey to everyone just how much snow we have piled around us after “Snomageddon” (and how hard we’re working to keep our paths and entrances clear). I’ve still included those photos here, but Willy B actually stole today’s blog with some mischievous behavior.

Before I elaborate on Willy’s exploits, I’ll have to provide a little context. In the newer wing of the Chimp House, the two former Wildlife Waystation groups reside in two sets of enclosures that essentially mirror each other; this layout enables each group to have access to a playroom, greenhouse, and either the mezzanine or front rooms for most of the day. We try to briefly close the chimps out of each area for daily cleaning, sometimes requiring us to play a weird version of Rush Hour to get things done. Lately, I’ve been experimenting with different strategies when I’m responsible for operating doors and shifting chimps around, and I have had some luck with a new shifting pattern in recent weeks. With all that promise, it was only a matter of time before I fell on my own sword.

This morning, everything initially went well and all the chimps shifted for breakfast. Amid the second round of shifting, during which Honey B usually decides to employ the filibuster to stall our caregiver agenda, it was actually Willy B who derailed my plans.

I had just successfully rotated Honey B, Mave and Willy B into the clean front rooms and invited the six chimps in the neighboring group to cross over from one playroom to the other. In that moment, Willy grabbed one of the bulky rocker toys in Front Room 5 and started drumming on it, causing the whole building to quake with every hit.

Chimps are generally quite preoccupied with their neighbors and are susceptible to social contagion (scientists call this combination the “Neighbor Effect“), so you can imagine the pandemonium that can evolve from one chimp’s abrasive behavior. In today’s case, the whole sanctuary stopped what they were doing to monitor Willy’s incessant banging with the utmost concern. With so much to be worried about, the six chimps in Cy’s group milled around the accessible spaces, occasionally responding with short outbursts of their own while completely ignoring my invitation to switch playrooms. Still, Willy B kept beating on the available surfaces at the expense of our eardrums.

It’s known that chimpanzees display for various reasons (to influence their group members, advertise their fitness, express their emotional state, cope with tension, etc.), but its difficult to identify a clear motive for any single occurrence of this behavior. Thus, we can’t know what caused Willy B to ceaselessly drum on the furniture today, but we can attest that he continued to do so for the better part of an hour while we all tried to stave off headaches. Perhaps his ultimate goal was simply to spice the morning up with a bit of mayhem.

Eventually, we were able to entice Cy’s group out of the messy playroom long enough to close it off, but it took quite a while to get to that point. Even once we had safely unlocked the enclosure, we had to clean them to the rhythm of Willy’s clamor. We expected that the display would culminate in some sort of conflict within the social groups, but Mave rescued them all from that fate. Amid a break in the commotion, Mave hooted, bounced over to Willy B, and pant-grunted right in his stoic face. Perhaps Willy had wanted that acknowledgement all along, or maybe he was simply growing tired and Mave had seized the opportunity to interrupt in the only way she knew how. Either way, the submissive pant-grunt punctuated the relentless drumming that was holding us all hostage, bringing Willy’s uproar to an end.

In addition to the embedded video, I’ve included the aforementioned photographs below. Be safe and have a good week, everyone!