Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

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chimpanzee

Waiting for the rain to stop

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As is happening in many parts of the world, we’re have already been experiencing a dry start to the season. The past couple of days have brought much needed rain to the area and while the humans are thrilled, the chimp house has been particularly quiet today. In between rain showers, several of the chimpanzees have enjoyed quick jaunts around Young’s Hill while trying to avoid the tall, lush (but very wet) grass. They’ve been up for one lap at a time and then quickly return to the chimp house and tuck away in corners for a nap.

Missy has spent much of her time at the top of the greenhouse, her little runner’s legs stretched out before her, as she watched the rain fall over Young’s Hill from the comfort of her nest.

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These feet!

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Just waiting for that break between showers, she decided to make herself really cozy:

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Watching and waiting patiently:

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At last:

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Cle Elum Wildlife

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As many of you know, our beloved (and sometimes troublesome) resident elk, Ellie, has made it a very well-known fact that she is in fact a horse. Or a cow. Or a goat. Or a human! But certainly not a wild elk. Despite her outward friendliness, we still keep our distance—she is still wild, after all, and ideally we would love for her to be more wild and less attracted to sticking around humans.

Today, Elizabeth spotted Ellie up on a high hill to the south of the sanctuary property. We both laughed, saying “what is Ellie doing way over there?” And then we realized, when four other elk followed, that wasn’t Ellie at all! We got very excited to see a small herd, which is sort of amusing when we see Ellie every day—elk really aren’t novel animals to us. But a herd! So exciting.

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Unfortunately, Ellie was busy breaking into our compost bin—a very Ellie-type thing to do—so she missed the herd as they passed through. As much as we wish for her to be wild, we recognize that she is a unique being. She probably will always be more human-oriented because of how she grew up. Honestly, I’m not sure she would identify herself as an elk.

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Imagine growing up with another species as your primary caregivers—you would undoubtedly have some sort of identity crisis. And though it is no one’s fault that Ellie was separated from her herd and ended up living at the farm next door, it’s definitely not the ideal situation for an elk.

For a chimpanzee, living in a human home is even more unnatural, and not surprisingly chimpanzees raised so closely with humans really struggle with their identity. Elizabeth wrote about “Burrito the misfit” the other day, and it’s so true. If he had been raised in an appropriate social environment, he most likely would be alpha male.

Some other “side effects” to being raised in an natural environment are Jamie’s love of boots and Foxie’s love of trolls. Though these are just part of everyday life here at Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest, when you think about it for a minute, it really is quite odd. But they are all unique beings and all have their idiosyncratic tendencies. For Ellie, that means rummaging through things, sitting in Diana and JB’s garden, and taking perimeter walks alongside the humans as Jamie leads the way on the inside of Young’s Hill.

For Foxie, that means delighting in these sort of funny-looking dolls with big eyes, crazy colorful hair, and hard plastic bodies. Here she is in a calm relaxing moment with one of her dolls (you can see just part of the troll in the top picture—he/she is out of the frame in the others but was still in her hand).

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Awkward Moments

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Although Burrito isn’t the leader of the group here, the other chimps do offer him lots of submissive greetings – it’s probably their way of trying to keep him calm since he can be a bit of a Tasmanian devil. But Burrito’s social awkwardness leads him to respond to these greetings in an unusual way. When another chimp approaches him to offer a greeting, Burrito usually turns away and squeezes his eyes shut, as if to say, “I don’t see you. This isn’t happening.” It seems that Burrito’s strategy for handling an awkward social situation is to avoid, avoid, avoid.

The other day I was taking some photos of Burrito when Negra (right) entered the room and offered Burrito a kiss greeting. As soon as Negra approached, Burrito looked the other way and closed his eyes.

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When he thinks the greeting is over, he’ll often pop an eye open to check if the other chimp is still there.

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The other chimps take Burrito’s odd behavior in stride, and luckily for Burrito, these greetings don’t last long. Once the uncomfortable moment has passed, he’s back to his playful self.

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Green grass, a warm greenhouse, and a comfortable nest

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Negra surprised us this morning by spending quite a bit of time foraging on the hill.

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Then, instead of going back to bed for the rest of the day, she spent some time lounging in the greenhouse with the rest of the gang.

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But by mid-afternoon, bed was calling, and she retreated to her nest with a view of the kitchen so that she could keep an eye on dinner preparations. And every few minutes, she would ever-so-thoughtfully bang on the window cage behind her to remind us that she was indeed still alive, but that there was no guarantee that she would continue in that state if dinner didn’t arrive soon.

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By the way, if you live in the Seattle area and listen to KIRO radio, keep an ear out for interviews conducted this morning with Co-Director Diana Goodrich and Volunteer Lizz Stewart for Rachel Belle’s Ring my Belle. If you don’t catch it, we’ll post a link as soon as it is available online.

Who’s There?

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We had a group of students visit today from The Northwest School, and the chimpanzees were very curious about them.

It was our first group visit at the observation area this year, and the weather was beautiful! Just like our summer visits, a staff member (J.B. today) gave a presentation first in the barn, providing information about the history of the sanctuary and chimpanzees in general, including the use of chimpanzees in the pet, entertainment, and biomedical industries.

Once the group came to the observation area, Jamie, being Jamie, was outside in a flash and spent some time checking out everyone’s footwear.

Negra, on the other hand, held back for a bit. Sometimes it seems that Negra avoids visitors, but today she went out on the hill, ignoring the forage at first, and just calmly checked out the visitors from a distance.

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Satisfied, she then went about her business looking for lunch forage scraps

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In addition to providing an educational opportunity for supporters of the sanctuary, it’s our goal for our limited visitor program to add something new and interesting for the chimpanzees in a way that they do not feel at all threatened, so it was great to see Negra react with such calm curiosity today.

 

Burrito was curious when the group was loading back on the bus, after he had his fill of the forage. He chose to watch their departure from the greenhouse, where he could see them but they couldn’t see him:

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Positive Reinforcement Training

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We’re really excited to be embarking on a new program here at Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest. Thanks to a generous grant from the National Anti-Vivisection Society Sanctuary Fund, we recently began a Positive Reinforcement Training (PRT) program with the goal of teaching the chimps to participate in cooperative health monitoring.

Many of you reading this are probably familiar with PRT – it’s the “clicker training” that you see used everywhere from teaching dolphins to do flips to teaching your own dog to come when called. It uses positive rewards (usually food) and a “bridge” (a clicker, whistle, or even the word “good”) to reinforce particular behaviors. PRT is a tool, and like most tools, it can be used for good and for bad. So while it may unfortunately be used to teach animals to perform tricks for people’s amusement, it can also have a positive effect on the welfare of chimpanzees in captivity.

In their many decades in different laboratories across the country, the Cle Elum Seven chimps were darted with chemical anesthetics so that the labs could carry out experiments, treat wounds and illnesses, and perform routine physical exams. In some cases, the chimps were forced into small cages and surrounded by technicians with syringes, each one waiting until the chimp moved close enough to the caging to jab them. It’s hard to imagine how terrifying that must have been. And it happened over and over again – for some, well over a hundred times.

Thankfully, life in the laboratory is behind them now, but sanctuaries also have to collect information on the chimpanzees’ health if we want to provide the best care possible. What if there was a way to gain the same information without anesthetizing them at all? And if they did require anesthetization, what if they could learn to willingly participate in the procedure and avoid the pain and trauma of being darted? That’s where PRT comes in.

PRT has been used successfully in zoos, labs, and sanctuaries to teach chimps to cooperate with a host of health monitoring procedures: presenting different body parts for examination, sitting on a scale to be weighed, urinating into a cup, allowing their temperature to be taken, presenting an arm or leg for injection, and even allowing their blood to be drawn.

For us, the real prize is to get a look at Burrito’s heart function using an ultrasound machine. A few years ago, Burrito started showing symptoms of congestive heart failure, and since then we have successfully treated his symptoms with medication. But we’d like to get an echocardiogram to confirm the diagnosis and monitor the disease’s progression, and we’d like it even more if we could avoid anesthetizing him for it.

The grant from NAVS allowed us to bring in Gail Laule from Active Environments for the first of many visits to help create our PRT program and train our staff. Our work with the chimps began last Tuesday, and it’s amazing how much progress the chimps have made in just a little over a week. We began with simple things, like touching a target (just a pvc tube with some tape on the end), and quickly moved on from there.

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There are some challenges, of course. Jamie likes to be in control, and this new program has got her quite confused about who exactly is in charge here. So for now, the bulk of Jamie’s training consists of teaching her to allow us to work with the other chimps without interference. Negra, who suffered so much in her 35 years in the lab, was scared of the sound of the clicker, so she needed to be eased into training with more sensitivity. But while that first day was a bit of a challenge for Negra and her caregivers, imagine how she would feel if we had to dart her someday when she became ill. The beauty of PRT is that you can slowly and safely desensitize the chimps to frightening interventions so that when they are really needed, they can be performed with less stress and trauma.

But there is one chimp in particular that seems to enjoy training even more than the others, and who seems to have a particular aptitude for it. Any guesses?

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That’s right, Burrito has finally found something that combines his two greatest passions: eating and playing with his caregivers. He is going to ace this program.

All of the chimps are learning to touch a target and to present different body parts for inspection – this is how we might examine and treat wounds, for example, and it also creates the foundation for more complex behaviors. To perform his ultrasound, Burrito will have to hold his chest to the caging for an extended period of time, so our training with him is also focusing heavily on that. Here’s a quick clip to show you how well our star student is doing:

We are so grateful to NAVS for providing the funding for this training, to Gail for getting us off on the right foot, and to all of our supporters who make each day in sanctuary possible for these seven chimps. We are looking forward to sharing our progress with you!