Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest
Hope. Love. Home. Sanctuary for primates.
Missy Chimpanzee, AKA Little Miss
Age: 43
Favorite foods: TOMATOES! 🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅!!
BFF: Annie
Special talents: Speed demon, master politician, tight rope walker
Favorite place to nap: Up high on a platform, usually close to Annie
Favorite activities: Sprinting on Young’s Hill, eating tomatoes, and playing with friends
Favorite food puzzle: Kongs
The arrival of spring means more time is spent exploring the 2 acre outdoor enclosure known as Young’s Hill.
Foxie keeps her treasured possessions close to her during her walks:
No vertical challenge is too much for Missy:
And breakfast is best when finished outside (in Jody’s humble opinion):
The change in color around here makes everyone glow just that much brighter!
Personally, I’ve never been much of a collector. I am not very neat, but I do enjoy when my surroundings are clutter-free. There’s a particular joy I get out of getting rid of things and thereby decreasing rather than increasing my possessions. But I’m fascinated by collectors and those who clearly get a unique satisfaction in their things.
It’s all the more fascinating to care for two chimpanzee collectors. Foxie is pretty famous for her doll collection, and most people who have been tuning in to our blog for a while know that Jamie loves cowboy boots. You might have also learned that she can be pretty into books too; when the two combine – books about cowboy boots – well, that must be something akin to heaven for her.
For a couple of weeks now, she’s been carrying around a book called Texas Boots purchased by a Jamie-fan through our Amazon.com wish list.
To say that she loves this book might be an understatement or a mischaracterization. Maybe there’s a particular word that describes the feeling collectors have for their things that transcends mere everyday love.
One interesting aspect of both Jamie’s and Foxie’s collections and how they interact with their chosen objects is that they share them with the humans. Jamie wants the staff and volunteers to put on her most cherished boots. Foxie passes her dolls to trusted caregivers for safekeeping and games of toss.
And now Jamie slides her beloved books and magazines under the caging so that we can carry them with us while we follow her around the outdoor expanse of Young’s Hill on her walks or just back and forth through the building.
This is the new routine.
Earlier this week, she passed me the Texas Boots book after we had finished up a session of Positive Reinforcement Training. I expected that we would carry out our usual post-PRT routine and walk around the hill, but it was a little dreary outside. So, instead, I sat on the other side of the caging with Jamie in the greenhouse and turned the pages of the book for her to see. She would focus longer on the images of people wearing boots, and she would nod her head when I turned a page, which is generally Jamie-speak for, “yes, I like that.” After flipping through the book a couple of times, I offered to give it back to her, and she took it.
She tucked it under her arm and continued to sit on the other side of the caging. We sat in contented silence in each other’s company like that for about five minutes (which is a really long time for an active chimpanzee!), until she got up to go about other activities.
It was one of the finest moments I’ve ever had with another being of any kind.
Jamie certainly has a way of implanting the desire to find more things that she likes – to fill her life with these moments of satisfaction that I can’t say that I completely understand, but that I appreciate beyond words.
Her boots, all of them donated to her, have been outgrowing their plastic bins for a while now, and it just so happened that the boot closet we were using for staff cleaning boots was emptied now that we have more space in Phase 1 of the expansion. So, I had the idea that we should put Jamie’s boots and other sundry things in that closet.
It’s in the perfect location because Jamie can see it from the playroom loft.
I had moved Jamie’s things into the closet when Anna was on vacation last week. Anna returned on Tuesday, and Jamie wasted no time in pointing out to Anna this exciting new home for her personal treasures. In case you too want to add to Jamie’s collection, I’ve added some more books to our wish list. When we receive items, we will put them in her closet so she can point them out for us to get for her.
In case you are worried that the other chimpanzees feel left out, I think they are just as mystified by Jamie’s attraction to certain objects as I am. Once in a while, I see Missy flipping through a book, and I even gave one to Burrito last week, which he unceremoniously tossed to the ground and walked away.
I guess you have to be a collector to get it.
The sanctuary is located in the Cascade mountain range near the base of a relatively small peak known as Lookout Mountain. Missy sees this as both an opportunity and a responsibility.
The chimps have two acres of outdoor space to roam but they spend much of their time on the elevated platforms taking in the view.
Railings on these platforms serve different purposes, depending on whether you are a human or a chimp. Do not try this unless you have opposable toes.
The Cle Elum Seven seem to value Young’s Hill, their two-acre outdoor habitat, as much for the potential it offers as they do for the space it offers. They certainly make use of the space in a variety of ways:
But they also seem to enjoy pausing in the doorway leading out and considering the possibilities.
We’ve been so busy in the chimp house today! Staff and some amazing volunteers raked out all the wood chips and straw in the greenhouse and replaced it with fresh shiny wood chips and straw! 🙂 What didn’t happen, was capturing any good photos. However, a few days ago I captured some photos of Jamie in one of her secret fort building modes and while they aren’t great quality, I do think they’re endearing. She’s always surprising us with her architectural feats and her desire to occasionally build “secret hideout” forts which are incredibly creative and amusing. Maybe she’s been feeling inspired by her Dwell magazines.
And once again we indulged her need to go incognito and pretended we couldn’t find her. I mean, we all need to hide out now and again. “Jamie?? Jamie? Where are you?”
I saw this illustration of primate hands shared on social media recently and thought it was a great example of how diverse the primate order is.
The most unusual hand belongs to the aye-aye (Daubetonia). It taps its long, slender fingers on trees in search of food. After opening up a hollow with its rodent-like incisors, it uses its specialized middle digit to extract grubs. Think of them as the primate version of a woodpecker.
Some primates, like the slow loris (Nycticebus) and potto (Perodicticus), have evolved hands that allow for better arboreal grasping. Notice how the index fingers have become mostly vestigial and the thumb has rotated away from the other digits. This is part of a suite of adaptations that allow them to maintain a strong grip for long periods of time. It’s probably not a coincidence that they look more like birds’ feet.
In another example of form following function, the long digits of tarsiers (Tarsius) have rounded, frog-like pads, allowing them to cling and leap like…yes, frogs!
Many arboreal species, like orangutans (Pongo), have evolved small thumbs while others, like the spider monkey (Ateles), lack an external thumb entirely to aid in climbing. While it’s tempting to think of opposable thumbs as somehow better or more advanced (even the spider monkey’s genus name sounds judgmental – Ateles, meaning incomplete or imperfect, is a reference to their missing thumbs), this is simply not true. The ancestor to the spider monkey had opposable thumbs but in the course of adapting to their environment, spider monkeys got those lousy things out of the way so that they could grip and swing better. They are perfectly complete for the niche they inhabit.
Looking at a chimpanzee’s hand, you can see that they are far less specialized than those of many other primates, making them generally well-suited to both climbing and walking. While chimpanzees walk on the soles of their feet, they flex their hands and bear weight on the outside of the intermediate phalanges (the part of the finger between the second and third knuckle).
Thick pads develop on this part of the hand for protection.
Long palms and fingers and short thumbs aid in gripping large trunks and branches.
The trade-off, when compared to human hands, is less power and control in the precision grip.
The length of a chimpanzee’s hand and more limited rotation and flexion of the thumb prevent pad-to-pad gripping or pinching, but they are still able to grasp and manipulate objects between the thumb and fingers, allowing for the use of tools.
