Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

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Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

Levi’s birthday

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We love to throw parties for the chimps’ birthdays at the sanctuary. After over five years at CSNW, we’ve really seen how the chimps are “aging backwards” with each passing birthday—which is just all the more reason to celebrate! For five out of the seven, we celebrate an honorary birthday because we don’t know their actual birth dates, either because they were captured in the wild, or because their records are so scarce.

We commemorate Jody’s honorary birthday every year on Mother’s Day because she had nine babies in the lab in nearly as many years, more than any of the other females at Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest.

One of Jody’s children, Levi, was born this day 30 years ago. He is now the same age as Burrito.

I’d love to say that we will be celebrating today in his honor, but Levi is not in a sanctuary. He is still living in a laboratory. Levi was one of the small group transferred from Alamogordo Primate Facility in New Mexico, to Texas Biomed in San Antonio a few years ago.

This was the only note written in Jody’s record, on his day of birth “11/23/83 — Delivered healthy infant male #88… removed and taken to nursery (Levi).”

Levi didn’t have the opportunity to grow up with his mother, and there is more and more evidence that points to how important it is for chimpanzees to be with their mothers. A recent study looked at a group of free-living male chimpanzees who were separated from their mothers, and 87% of the sample group died earlier than the expected lifespan.

Levi is still alive, but it’s unlikely that his birthday will be any different than any of the last 29 birthdays that he has lived in laboratories.

Levi and the approximately 866 other chimpanzees still in research in this country deserve to be in sanctuary.

As many of you know, the NIH announced that they are planning to retire about 300 of their chimpanzees. Just this week congress passed an amendment to the Chimp Act which increases the spending cap on federal sanctuary support, and it’s currently on the President’s desk waiting to be signed. This is a good step in the right direction, but we still have a lot of work ahead of us.

Be sure to subscribe to the Eyes on Apes Take Action Alerts to be notified when we need to voice our support for the release of chimpanzees still imprisoned in laboratories.

Levi:

Levi

Jody in the lab:

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Jody in sanctuary:

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Eye gaze

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Primatology is such an interdisciplinary field—it’s a mix of anthropology, psychology, zoology, biology, and ethology—and depending on a primatologist’s background, they have very different interests. If you have an anthropology background for instance, you might be interested nonhuman primates from the perspective of human origins for group size, culture, linguistics, and so on.

My background is in psychology, so in many of my classes we studied comparative cognition of nonhuman primates and humans. One thing comparative psychologists study is theory of mind. Do nonhuman primates have a theory of mind? That is, do they understand that other individuals have different beliefs, desires, and perception than their own? There’s a ton of behavioral measures that researchers use to determine if an individual—nonhuman or human—has a theory of mind.

One behavior that is evidence of a theory of mind is eye gaze and joint attention. Chimpanzees, like humans, communicate with eye gaze. They use it with each other and with humans, too. For instance if some food has dropped just out of reach, Burrito might get a caregiver’s attention by making some noise, and when they approach him he will look straight toward the food item. If we follow his gaze we see the peanut he’s trying to get. Things like this happen all the time, and for us, common sense would say that of course chimpanzees have a theory of mind. Burrito understands that until he grabs my attention and points it out to me, I am not aware of the peanut lying just outside the caging.

Very frequently we are asked if eye contact is OK with chimpanzees. Well, it is! And they make eye contact quite frequently. It’s one way they communicate with us.

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Drinks from the hose

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Jamie often interrupts our cleaning routine to request a drink of water from the hose. She’s quite persistent; we’re usually not allowed to resume cleaning until she’s had her fill. Today, while Debbie and I were cleaning the front rooms, Jamie distracted us for probably fifteen minutes. We’re happy to serve, of course.

Happy Chimps

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The chimps here are so photogenic and always look happy, as you can see below:

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Every once in awhile we do catch them when they’ve perhaps woken up on the wrong side of the nest:

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The Great Baked Pumpkin

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Variety is the spice of life and we try to provide that for the chimpanzees even in their meals. Most of their diet is designed, as much as is possible, to simulate a natural chimpanzee diet and, as such, consists of primarily fresh fruit and vegetables. This is supplemented with nuts, seeds, and chow to provide protein sources.

Now it can, on occasion, become a challenge to accommodate personal preference in addition to providing creative variation whenever your options are fruit or vegetables. Often the refrigerator is full of squash varietals, especially during the fall and, as it happens, the chimpanzees are not that fond of raw squash.

I’m not sure who first thought to bake the squash but whoever it was deserves chimpanzee food squeaks! It turns out that, although the chimpanzees would rather not eat squash raw, if you bake it it becomes an exciting and delectable treat. So, in the spirit of fall baking and for the sake of a little novelty, I decided to see what happens if you bake and serve pumpkin for dinner. The result?

Seven thrilled chimpanzees, with the accompanying food squeaks of joy. Baked pumpkin, for the win!

Baked pumpkin dinner:
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Here is Missy (on the left) and Foxie (on the right) being served some delicious baked pumpkin in the greenhouse:
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Jody (on the left) and Jamie (on the right) enjoying the pumpkin:
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And, last but not least, Annie eating her serving of pumpkin:
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