Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

Hope. Love. Home. Sanctuary

chimpanzee

Take Action Tuesday: Billy chimp on Chelsea Lately

by

EOA take action tuesday

This Action Alert was sent out today to our Eyes on Apes Take Action list—have you joined? Sign up for the list today to get these alerts straight to your inbox!

Many of you might have seen that a chimpanzee named Billy was on the show Chelsea Lately last week. Billy was seen rocking and showing his top teeth—a clear sign of distress. The show said they would have Billy back the next night, and despite hearing from thousands of people to please not air Billy again, they went ahead with the segment anyway.

Screen Shot 2013-11-21 at 12.18.45 PM

We want to continue to put pressure on the show and on Chelsea Handler, the host of the show. Please send a polite letter to her, c/o Tom Brunelle, letting her know that chimps like Billy should not be used in entertainment. Not only are there numerous welfare concerns, but seeing chimpanzees alongside humans perpetuates the pet trade. Studies also show that since chimpanzees are so prevalent in media, people aren’t aware of their endangered status. Please speak up for Billy and all chimpanzees still used in entertainment and ask Chelsea to issue a mea culpa about Billy’s appearance and promise to never use apes on her production again.

You may send your letter to the Chelsea Handler c/o Tom Brunelle at [email protected]

Sample Letter to Chelsea Lately:

[Date]
Dear Ms. Handler:

I was disappointed to hear that Chelsea Lately had Billy the chimpanzee on the show, and despite hearing from concerned advocates, aired a second appearance by Billy. You should know that great apes used in entertainment are torn away from their mothers as infants, often repeatedly beaten during training, and then discarded when they become too strong to be managed.

Using a chimpanzee for a cheap laugh sends the message that these amazing beings are simply props. Surely you are aware that chimpanzees are endangered species in critical need of protection?

Please make the compassionate decision to issue a mea culpa for airing Billy’s segments two nights in a row, and pledge to never exploit great apes for entertainment purposes again. Thank you for your consideration of my comments on this urgent matter.

Sincerely,
[Your name here]
[Your city & state]

If you send an e-mail to Chelsea, please remember to BCC Eyes on Apes at [email protected] for tracking purposes. Thank you!

Levi’s birthday

by

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:

eb crop jody hand out buckshire cage IMG_0816

Jody in sanctuary:

web Jody best new blankets nest playroom IMG_2376

web Jody droopy lip grass yh IMG_8648

web Jody hold onions Annie's birthday Young's Hill YH IMG_7283

web Jody eat flower green grass YH IMG_3414

web ed Jody eat nut food first day exploring youngs hill IMG_0181

Eye gaze

by

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.

web_Burrito_YH_ek_IMG_6224

web_Foxie_hold_Dora_look_at_camera_GH_ek_IMG_5696

web_Jamie_stand_shaky_bridge_look_at_camera_YH_ek_IMG_6228

web_Jody_look_at_camera_lunch_anniversary_birthday_party_greenhouse_GH_ek_IMG_2402

 

Happy Chimps

by

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

web_Annie_GH_ek_IMG_6148

web_burrito_relaxed_face_hold_streamer_play_cute_seahawks_party_GH_dg_MG_6014

web_jamie_look_at_new_boot_PR_kd_IMG_6019

web_Jody_sit_drooped_lip_YH_ek_IMG_6210

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

web_jamie_best_photo_ever_grumpy_face_GH_ek_IMG_4155

First snow

by

It’s been a pretty mild fall / beginning of winter, and we finally got our first snowfall at the sanctuary overnight. It was just a dusting, but Missy was VERY eager to get outside for a taste.

Missy's hand reach for snow

Missy eating snow

Jamie also went out quickly to get a snack.

Jamie's hands reaching for snow

Jamie with handfuls of snow

We were wondering if the colder weather might slow down Jamie’s desire to walk around the hill. The answer is no. So far four walks and counting. She did wait until the snow melted, though. Missy joined Jamie on one of her walks. She gave us a big head start then ran full-speed up the hill. You can see a photo on her Facebook page.

 

Speaking of Facebook, a few weeks ago we asked on our Facebook page how fans became interested in chimpanzees. The answers were really interesting. One person recalled the video of the chimpanzees at CSNW first experiencing a big snowstorm, which was shared on a couple of news stations.

The video, which is now almost five years old, is posted below. That was before we put the panels on the greenhouse, so really before they had a greenhouse, and long before they had the 2-acre Young’s Hill. The chimps are leaning out of front room #4 into what we called the outdoor area then. Listen to those happy food squeaks and watch the prehensile lips in action!