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chimpanzee

Rainy Days With Neggie

September 20, 2023 by Kelsi 17 Comments

Personally, I am in deep denial about summer being over. Negra, on the other hand, seems to be enjoying the weather change. Today was a cool, overcast day that turned into a light misty rain from time to time. Negra has perfected rainy day comfort. She finds a cozy nest in the green house, finds a blanket to cover over her whole body including her head, and if she needs to get up- say, for breakfast- she grabs what she needs and goes back up to enjoy breakfast in bed. However, blanket must come back up over head.

Please enjoy this photo series of Negra on a rainy day, as much as she did :).

Snoozy Negra:

Breakfast in bed:

Filed Under: Negra, Nesting, Sanctuary Tagged With: chimp, chimpanzee, Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest, Negra, Nesting, Sanctuary

Play All Day

September 18, 2023 by J.B. 11 Comments

If you hear laughter coming from the chimp house, chances are Burrito is involved.

Also – we put out a lunch forage for Cy’s group this afternoon and Chad placed a whole tomato where only the bravest chimpanzee could find it. Look at Lucky go!

Filed Under: Burrito, Forage, Jamie, Lucky, Play, The Bray, Young's Hill Tagged With: chimpanzee, forage, northwest, Play, rescue, Sanctuary

Grooming with Terry

September 11, 2023 by J.B. 15 Comments

Chimpanzee grooming vocalizations fall into a few broad categories. Generally speaking, you’ve got your teeth clackers, your lip smackers, and your raspberry blowers. But within those categories, every chimp’s vocalization is unique. Some are quiet, with the lips just barely touching as if they are whispering. Others are quite loud – I can often hear Willy B’s teeth clacking during the morning grooming sessions through the security camera system audio.

Each chimpanzee has a different style of grooming, as well. Terry likes to do two things: 1) gently brush your skin with his fingers, and 2) try to pull individual hairs out of your arm. Our safety rules prohibit us from allowing the chimps to use two hands while grooming us, so Terry is forced to try to pluck our hairs by grasping them between his index and middle fingers. Luckily for us, it’s not very effective.

For chimps like Terry, grooming seems to be more about spending quality time with chimp and human friends. For Honey B, on the other hand, it’s all about picking scabs and drawing blood. She gets frenzied when she sees something to pick at, and she will continually direct you to turn your arm or present a different body part until she finds something good. I actually feel bad disappointing her when I haven’t injured myself recently. Honey B is the reason why we sometimes turn around and wonder how someone got in a fight without us hearing a sound. Where did all those wounds suddenly come from? Turns out Dr. Honey B was on duty and she opened every nearly-healed scrape and scab on one of her friends!

I wish chimpanzees were always as gentle as Terry is in this video as he tries to shoo away the third wheel at his grooming party.

Filed Under: Chimpanzee Behavior, Grooming, Honey B, Terry Tagged With: chimpanzee, Grooming, noises, northwest, rescue, Sanctuary, vocalizations

A Day for Annie!

September 10, 2023 by Grace 25 Comments

There can never be enough parties!!!

That must be one of our mantras here at CSNW. After celebrating HOOT! 2023 yesterday evening, we rolled into the chimp house this morning ready to celebrate again. Today, though, we are celebrating Annie’s 49th birthday! Like Jenna wrote in her blog yesterday, it truly takes a village to support the chimpanzees and cattle in our care. Thank you to everyone who participated in HOOT! yesterday, whether in person or remotely. It’s really wonderful to be surrounded by a community such as this one.

Today, we celebrated Annie’s 49th. It’s always shocking to me when I remember Annie’s age, because (for me) she is timeless.

Annie is a special lady. She is what we refer to as a ‘chimps chimp’, in that she prefers spending time with her group mates rather than with humans. She lets others in her group take charge and can be anxious at times, but loves spending time with Missy and is known to play rough with Burrito every now and then. She has had a tough journey- we celebrate her birthday on September 10th and we believe it’s possible that she was born in the wild. Before coming to CSNW, she spent her life in biomedical research where she was used in hepatitis vaccine studies. She also had quite a few babies while in the lab, potentially even up to 7, but they were all taken from her. In the lab, she wasn’t given the opportunity to decide how she would be known.

Here at CSNW, she is known for making her unique ‘bird-noises’ when she’s laying down, for washing her face with water that she cups in her hands and rubs vigorously across her forehead which leaves the hair on the top of her forehead all spiky. She is known for walking (or even running) bipedally while out on the hill, and for her love of human toes and comfy nests. Us humans often know when spring is coming after a long winter when we find Annie wearing one of her beloved head bands around her waist. She is sweet, kind, and often quiet, but will adventure to the top of Young’s Hill with her best pal, Missy. If you’re serving her, she will let you know if you are taking too long (or if she’s not ready to take something yet). Her food grunts when she’s eating something she loves (like pears at breakfast this morning) are deep and soothing.

We love her for exactly who she is.

 

A big thank you to Paulette Wrisley for sponsoring Annie’s birthday today- from everyone here, thank you for helping us celebrate this special lady!!!

BONUS PHOTOS:

Annie:

Foxie:

Jamie:

Negra:

Filed Under: Annie, Chimpanzee, Forage, Latest Videos, Most Viewed Videos, Sanctuary, Thanks Tagged With: Annie, chimpanzee, chimpanzee sanctuary, Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest, forage, Party, Sanctuary

CSNW’s Funniest Home Videos: Part Two

September 7, 2023 by Grace 15 Comments

It has been quite a busy day here in the chimp house, so I’ve decided to keep my written blog brief and hope the video speaks for itself! 🙂

Back in January I wrote a blog titled ‘Cheers to The Goofy Moments‘- the first instillation of our own version of America’s Funniest Home Videos. We’ve been continuing to collect blooper moments throughout our work days here in the chimp house when we can. I hope you get a chuckle out of watching them just like we do!

Enjoy!

Bonus Photos:

Annie, gazing lovingly at the Frisbee Puzzle Enrichment they received today:

Terry enjoying the cool, cloudy afternoon by taking some time for himself out on The Bray:

 

Filed Under: Annie, Caregivers, Chimpanzee, Latest Videos, Most Viewed Videos, Sanctuary, Terry Tagged With: Annie, chimp, chimpanzee, chimpanzee sanctuary, Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest, Sanctuary, Terry

Perimeter Patrol Parkour

September 4, 2023 by J.B. 16 Comments

While the caregivers were preparing breakfast, Burrito and his family set out on their first patrol of the day.

Sometimes patrolling is serious business, like when there are strangers on the property or unusual animal noises coming from the hillside above. But most are a more laid back affair, with the object being to enjoy some fresh air, climb as many structures as possible along the way, and, occasionally, grab the feet of the person ahead of you.

In this video you can see Burrito selecting his stick of the day, which he then carries back with him to the chimp house. I remember working for days to clean up all of the slash debris from the trees we cut down to create the extended fence line. Thank goodness I gave up trying to get it all. Clearly these are some great sticks! Ultimately, these end up along with Jamie’s library of well-worn-but-still-clean-enough-to-keep books on the windowsill between the playroom and the kitchen.

Filed Under: Burrito, Young's Hill Tagged With: Burrito, chimpanzee, northwest, patrol, rescue, Sanctuary, stick

A Natural History of Jerks

August 28, 2023 by J.B. 20 Comments

Male chimps can be jerks. True, females can also be jerks (see: Chimpanzee, Jamie), and not all males are jerks (at least not all of the time). There is an exception to every rule. Nonetheless, it is undeniable that chimpanzee jerkishness has a certain maleness to it, just as chimpanzee maleness contains a certain jerkishness.

But just as not all male chimps are alike, so too is it true that not all jerks are alike. While this is by no means an an exhaustive examination of the topic, here we will distinguish between two types of jerk: Those jerks who wreak havoc blindly, as if possessed, and those who inflict their jerkiness with forethought and intention.

To illustrate the former, let’s turn to our dear friend Willy B. Today I watched him sit peacefully in the shade beneath a climbing structure on the Bray, his 2-acre habitat, surveying the yard for remnants of a the day’s forage. When the forage was finished, he quietly returned to the indoor enclosures. It being mid-afternoon, however, this peaceful Dr. Jekyll was suddenly and inexplicably transmogrified into a raging Mr. Hyde. Apropos of nothing and with no other chimps in sight, he began to bang on the food chute with the back of his wrist. The noise and vibration shattered the calm of the afternoon and soon the others were up from their naps. With hair on end, they circled each other in the confines of the front room area. Some began to pant hoot, which in turn raised the tension in the room even further. Minutes went by. The banging was incessant. Others began to stand bipedally and swagger. Bang, bang, bang. The noise swelled and soon came to fully occupy the space where thoughts would normally occur, making it impossible to do anything but join in the chaos. Bang, bang, bang…

BANG! A fight breaks out. The swirling mass of chimpanzees, now screaming, races from the front rooms through the chute and out to the Bray. Willy B climbs to the top of the tower and, with a fear grimace, watches as the other chimps threaten and hit one another. But he is not angry. Instead, he is scared and confused. Because he is once again Dr. Jekyll, wondering what on earth could have caused such tumult below.

Interestingly, this fight contained within it, and was indeed amplified by, the actions of our second type of jerk. Are you familiar with the admonition, common in both comedy and politics, to never punch down? For male chimpanzees, punching down is not only accepted in certain circumstances but is in fact a right of passage. As Craig Stanford states in The New Chimpanzee,

[Adolescent male chimpanzees] don’t submissively pant grunt to one another, and dominance among them is hard to discern. But once a young male reaches adulthood, he begins to climb to higher rank by taking on and intimidating each adult female. When he has risen in status above the most dominant female, the young male finds himself at the bottom of the male dominance network. Only time and repeated jousts with higher-ranking males will determine his ultimate highest status. (p.42-43)

According to some researchers, adolescent male chimpanzees routinely harass adult females as a low-cost way method of honing their competitive skills before testing them in the much riskier world of male competitive dominance. Gordo is well beyond adolescence, but his actions are often reminiscent of a chimpanzee stuck permanently in the liminal space between the female and male hierarchies. While size does not dictate rank, his more diminutive stature makes it unlikely that would challenge Cy, Terry, or Willy B directly. His social skills are of little help, either. He is able, however, to dominate Honey B. Usually.

As the dust on the Bray began to settle, the chimpanzees worked their way through the chute and back to the greenhouse. The screams had subsided and all that remained was Honey B’s diminishing whimper. This, thought Gordo, was the perfect time to assert himself. As she approached him, he hit her across the back and ran straight back to the Bray, knowing that she was afraid of the outdoors and wouldn’t have the courage to follow him.

He reached the platform and turned to watch Honey B screaming at him helplessly from the end of the chute.

Is it any less indecent for Willy B to cause daily disruptions to the harmony of the group simply because they are born out of blind rage and not malice? I make no claims as to the relative moral status of these two varieties of jerkishness. Nor, again, do I intend to cast all males as irredeemably jerkish. But in my experience, they do seem on average to contain each type of jerkishness in greater proportion than their female counterparts.

And as to whether these same tendencies prevail in my own species, I claim ignorance.

Filed Under: Chimpanzee Behavior, Gordo, Willy B Tagged With: aggression, behavior, chimpanzee, jerk, northwest, rescue, Sanctuary

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