Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

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Bold Adventurers

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Jody, ever the forager, harvested some big handfuls of snow this morning:

Jody walking with snow

Jody holding snow 2

 

This is determination:

Jody holding snow 1

 

Meanwhile, Jamie was passing Missy on a structure:

Jamie and Missy

 

It looks like they are hatching some sort of secret plan:

Jamie passing Missy

 

Or maybe Jamie always looks like she’s cooking up something:

Jamie on structure

Jamie background of snow

 

Encouraged by these bold adventurers, the humans (me + Anna, J.B., and interns Courtney and Anthony) headed onto the hill (with the chimps safely indoors) and plowed and shoveled some more pathways.

 

Missy chose a high vantage point:

Missy top of cabin

 

While Jamie immediately checked out the new trail:

Jamie in snow

Jamie disappearing

 

Annie chose to collect some more snow and call it a day:

Annie snow in mouth

Annie following Missy

 

Negra was likely keeping herself cozy indoors:

Negra under blankets Negra in front of window

 

And Burrito and Foxie (sorry, no photos of them today), took quick forays to get snow snacks. All in all, a very nice day at the sanctuary.

 

P.S. The buoy / boat bumper ball lives on! Kathleen and Sherry’s predictions were better than some of us who thought it would be deflated by now.

 

Introductions

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Introductions. In the chimp sanctuary world, no word is as simultaneously exciting and terrifying.

Introductions occur anytime you form a social group from unfamiliar individuals. They are exciting because chimps are social creatures, and they benefit greatly from living in groups, especially groups that are large and diverse. And they are terrifying because chimpanzees can be incredibly aggressive and they don’t always welcome new members with open arms.

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As many of you know, Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest is in the process of expanding. Our plan is to add a new wing to the facility to accommodate an additional group, but we also hope to add new members to the Cle Elum Seven family. So what can we expect when we introduce new chimps to this group that has been together for nearly a decade?

Let’s start with the good news. According to the literature, over 85% of documented introductions have been successful. In studies like these, an introduction is considered a success when a chimp is integrated into the group and remains there for at least one to two months.

Now, the bad news. Even when introductions are successful, the process can be ugly. How ugly? Let me explain it this way: the introduction protocol from a progressive and reputable zoo recommends that introductions be stopped immediately only in cases of “severe injuries that impede locomotion, loss of limb function, severe gaping wounds with bone(s) exposed, severe blood loss, [or] compromised state of consciousness.” According to the same document, a discussion about stopping the introduction may be warranted in situations of “extreme fatigue or severe loss of appetite, relentless pursuit of an individual such that the individual can’t eat, sleep, etc…[or] mental shutdown.”

Imagine if we applied these criteria to humans…

How was Billy’s first day of school?

Well, Ricky bit half of his ear off, the other kids chased him up and down the hallway all morning, and he got trapped at the top of the jungle gym for an hour during recess by a raging hoard of 6-year-olds, but by lunchtime they allowed him come down and eat a few tater tots off the floor. So, all in all, things are going pretty well!

The thing is, chimps are not humans, and we need to judge their interactions by a different standard. It’s not as cold and heartless as it may seem because if we separated them at the first sign of aggression, there would be very few chimps living in groups. The Cle Elum Seven are a good example of this. They’re all missing bits and pieces of ears, fingers, and toes from fights during their time in the lab and here at the sanctuary. But by and large, they’ve learned to get along, and they’ll do the same when it comes time to add someone new to the mix.

Despite all the fighting and potential for injury, chimps will usually work things out if we allow them to. And when they do, they get to take back a little piece of the life they should have known in the wild.

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20 snapshots of the day

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I probably could never quite explain how ecstatic we all were to wake up to sunshine and beautiful clear blue skies this morning. We couldn’t wait to start shoveling the chimps’ walkway on Young’s Hill and fluff it up with fresh, dry straw so that they could enjoy their morning outside.

As we prepped the walkway the chimpanzees were so excited, intermittently watching us and playing and laughing with one another inside.

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Once I opened the door to the hill I couldn’t believe my eyes when who but Negra was leading the group outside! You can just see her head peeking out from in front of Missy at the head of the line. Then we have Annie, Foxie and Jamie bringing up the rear with one of her new snow shovels (Burrito was the one person who opted to stay inside and eat snow from the raceway door, but he’s been enjoying a day of Burrito-style antics with his caregivers):

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I put a straw path up to one of the swinging tires, always a favorite spot to check for ice treats. Jody headed straight for it and quickly made her way back to the greenhouse with her prize. The trick was getting around boss lady, Jamie, with her treat undetected.

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But the boss had work to do so Jody was able to sneak by.

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Missy:

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Annie enjoying her solitude:

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But she was so happy when her best friend, Missy, arrived and greeted her with a kiss and a hug:

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Foxie rubs her toes together when she’s happy and content and if you look close you can see she seemed to be pretty pleased to be enjoying the morning outside with her troll:

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Jamie was in her element this morning as she proudly surveyed her snow covered kingdom:

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Foxie and troll headed back inside after stopping to collect snow on the way:

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Annie was the last to head inside, but had to stop briefly to readjust her huge mouthful of snow:

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Jamie still had a little work to do:

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Negra didn’t stay out long, but she made it quite away out to collect snow and then returned to her favorite sunny spot inside the greenhouse to enjoy it, along with Jody.

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It’s been a good day at the sanctuary! The chimpanzees have spent a lot of time outside enjoying some warmer temperatures and even more time at the top of the toasty greenhouse grooming and napping. Blue skies and sunshine have worked wonders and been a welcome respite from our crazy winter for all the primates here today.

The Complete Story

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It’s often said that a picture is worth a thousand words, and this is often true. But pictures are only snapshots of a single instant, and they often fail to provide perspective or context. If you saw this photo of Jamie:

jamie face

you might conclude that she is a depressed chimpanzee who lives in a small cage. But your conclusions would begin to be better informed if you also saw this photo of her wrestling and laughing with her friend Foxie:

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or this photo of her surveying her kingdom:

web Jamie YH view of valley below_MG_4302

These are all moments in Jamie’s life, and taken together, they begin to paint a picture of Jamie’s personality and her experience in sanctuary. But individually, none of them are the complete story. Jamie is a complex person made up of unique interests, personality traits, and life experiences. Like most of us, she is impossible to categorize, and she is full of contradictions. She is bossy and insecure, selfish and generous, serious and lighthearted, gentle and brutal. She does probably experience depression and feel confined at times, and she also experiences joy and freedom. She is sometimes sweet and sometimes a little mean-spirited and we love all of her.

This is equally true of all of the chimpanzees, and though we do our best to share a variety of perspectives on this blog over time, most of the time you are only seeing a snapshot in any given blog post. The snapshots we share are always honest snapshots, but they are never the complete story. We love the chimps we care for not because they are angels or victims or martyrs, but because they are each individuals who are amazing and flawed and perplexing. It’s one of our greatest joys to get to gradually discover their complete stories.

Chimpanzee Strength

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Chimpanzees are naturally incredibly strong. This physical strength, combined with their tendency towards sudden aggression that J.B. touched on in his blog post yesterday, cautions humans who work around chimpanzees to be very, very careful. This is why when you do a quick internet search on “chimpanzee muscle strength,” the resulting articles are often tied to a report on a human who was attacked by a chimpanzee.

The text of this article from 2012 after an attack is particularly helpful in providing information about why chimpanzees are so strong, explaining that the muscle fibers closest to the bones are much longer and more dense in chimpanzees than humans, presumably making those muscles much more powerful.

When the chimpanzees arrived at Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest in 2008, their muscles were atrophied or had never fully developed from lack of use, but all of the chimpanzees were still stronger (in many ways) than any of us humans could ever hope to be.

Jody Before
Jody on the day she arrived at Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

I often wonder what it felt like to use those muscles exploring their new sanctuary home. To feel them engage while running and climbing and displaying, and then to feel their strength building over time.

chimpanzees climbing

 

It must have felt both strange and exhilarating.

 

Here’s a tribute to respecting chimpanzee strength with some muscle shots of each of the chimpanzees at the sanctuary:

 

Annie’s shoulders:

Annie walking

 

We got a clear  view of Burrito’s chest muscles after he was shaved for his medical exam this past summer:

Burrito bare chest

 

Even petite Foxie has incredible upper body strength:

Foxie close-up arm muscles

 

Hanging like this doesn’t take much effort at all by Jamie:

Jamie hanging

 

Jody’s certainly not the most athletic chimpanzee, but, when motivated, she uses those muscles to get her where she wants to go:

Jody climbing

 

Same with Negra – she doesn’t tend to exert any more energy than necessary, but she’s pretty buff even under her more “squishy” parts:

Negra arm

Negra climbing

 

And then there’s Missy, who uses her muscles, particularly her strong legs, as often as she can:

Missy tightrope

Missy's leg

Who’s in charge?

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One of the first things you realize when you begin working with chimps is that you are not in charge. We humans may have larger brains, but believe me, the chimps are just not that impressed.

web Jamie outside close up serious sheet over shoulders_MG_5804

On a good day, they graciously allow us into their world as friends or playmates. On a bad day, we are unwilling participants (usually the victim) in their constantly unfolding social dramas. But most of the time we are merely spectators, forced to watch impotently from the sidelines.

Fights are a good example of this. If you’ve worked with chimps for a while, you can forget what it was like to witness your first fight – the piercing screams, bodies leaping and rolling and flailing across the enclosure, the huge canine teeth bared for all to see. The first time you see it, you wonder if anyone will come out alive. But after a while, you get used to it, and you start to differentiate between regular squabbles and the more serious fights based on the tenor of the screams alone. You get so immune to it, in fact, that during minor fights you don’t even bother looking up from your computer until you notice a new volunteer breaking out in tears and wondering how a group of people so heartless and unsympathetic could have ever been placed in charge of a sanctuary.

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The thing is, even if we wanted to intervene in a fight, there’s not a whole lot we could do. When chimps are fighting, they are intensely focused on the task at hand. When the potential for a life-threatening fight is high, as the case may be during social introductions, caregivers might try to break up a fight by spraying the chimps with a hose or firing a CO2 extinguisher into the air with the hope that the noise will distract them just long enough to get them separated. But most of the time, all we can do is stand by and assess the damage.

We often joke that it’s the chimps that run the sanctuary, not us, but there’s more than a bit of truth to that idea. Within these walls, we have no choice sometimes but to play by their rules.