Of all the Cle Elum Seven, Jody and Negra are probably the least playful. Both are more solitary as compared to the others, and seem to prefer to spend much of their time either grooming or nesting. Negra has become more and more playful lately, but her typical play partners are either her caregivers, or Missy or Foxie, who are both super playful, so, you can imagine my surprise (and delight) when I looked outside and saw the following scene.
chimpanzee
Hail to the Queen
None of the following photos are by any stretch of the means “award winning”, but they represent a very special moment I just had with Negra. I was sitting outside on the new concrete footings for the soon-to-be tunnel to Young’s Hill (!!) and hanging out with Burrito. We were alternating between grooming, tickling, kissing my hand, and playing this game we often play where he leans to one side and bites the cage and I reach towards him like I’m going to touch him and he moves to the other side, laughing hysterically. Although for Burrito, it was a very mellow moment. Negra was laying beside us in her typical corner of the outdoor area with a bright pink blanket completely over her. She heard us starting to get louder with our “fake out” game and sat up, threw the blanket off of her and walked over towards Burrito to greet him. She sat next to him for a little while, but since our playful games had fizzled, Mr. B eventually walked away. Negra then walked back over to her pink blanket and put it over her head. I said “Oh Neg, you look so beautiful!” and asked her if I could take her picture. She gave me a slight headnod of reassurance, so I took the following photos. She seemed pretty content that the focus was now on her. Unfortunately I was too close to get a photo without bars, but I think with a face like Negra’s, they are pretty easy to forget about.
Annie
Overgrooming
You may have noticed in photos and videos over the last year or so that Jamie has resumed overgrooming her belly. In the lab, she picked all of the hair out from her chest down to her waist on her right side. She stopped as soon as she arrived at the sanctuary. We were delighted, of course, and as her caregivers we patted ourselves on the back for a job well done.
Then, last summer, she began to pick at her belly again. It coincided with a brief illness, and while she recovered from the illness quickly, the overgrooming persisted.
It’s possible that the discomfort of the illness played a role in reviving an old habit, but it may have just been a coincidence. Perhaps the novelty of sanctuary had worn off and she was seeking more stimulation. Or maybe it was stress. Or anxiety. The staff and volunteers created new enrichment programs to try to keep her occupied, but the overgrooming continued.
Overgrooming is a fact of life in captivity. Not all chimps will do it, but for some it is a lifelong habit (in a recent study, overgrooming was found to be one of the most widespread abnormal behaviors in zoo chimpanzees). Normally, we wouldn’t be too concerned, because habits by definition are persistent and do not always reflect an individual’s current state. Both Annie and Jody overgroom their arms, but both were stolen from their families, raised without a mother, imprisoned in tiny cages for decades, and subjected to medical experiments. With a history like that, I would be surprised if someone didn’t have a lifetime of behavioral issues.
But trauma is only one part of the problem – captivity itself is the other. Chimpanzees are incredibly smart, and they evolved to live in dynamic environments and in complex social systems. Even the best zoos and sanctuaries are dull and predictable in comparison. Captivity also restricts a chimpanzee’s ability to make her own choices. We often take this ability for granted, but it is extremely important to our well-being – similar to the way we don’t appreciate the air we breathe until we are without it. I imagine that for a person like Jamie, captivity must literally feel suffocating at times.
Jamie’s behavior is only unusual in that she did stop, only to resume two years later. What changed? We may never know.
Just to be clear, Jamie is fine. She is healthy and doing all of the same things that she has always done. But we want to be as open as we can about life at the sanctuary, and that includes all of the difficulties and frustrations of caregiving as well as the positive, uplifting stories.
Enrichment for who?
Because of her extreme intelligence, Jamie is a hard chimp to enrich. But I am certainly up for the challenge.
As I know we’ve mentioned before, enrichment comes in many different shapes and sizes. It’s not just the toys, blankets, and clothing we put out each day. It could be the way they are put out, or what they decide to do with them that is the enriching part. It’s all about creativity, both the caregivers’, and the chimps’ themselves.
We put out new enrichment for the chimps each day, and we have an enrichment calendar to help keep things different and fresh. I try to update this regularly and to keep coming up with new ideas, either from volunteers, things I’ve seen at other sanctuaries, or more importantly, from what I’ve seen these chimps do, themselves. That, to me, is the most important part of being a good caregiver– knowing the individuals in your care. It’s truly a symbiotic relationship. And these guys inspire me each and every day.
The enrichment calendar can sometimes look like a joke to those preparing for the next day– “things that rhyme, aka Dr. Seuss Day”, “enrichment hanging from scarves”, “square things”, “troll heads in buckets”, “everything red”… A lot of it sounds crazy. But the point is not that the chimps particularly love “square things”, but to force us to “think outside of the box”, so to speak, and to shuffle around the enrichment that we have so that the chimps are always getting something new and different (we have A LOT of enrichment!).
Lately, I’ve discovered that if you leave the toys in a big pile (rather than scatter them), the chimps have a tendency to go through each and every thing- picking things up, smelling them, biting them, wearing them, etc… and that’s exactly what happened today.
Jamie made herself comfy and spent about an hour and a half going through the enrichment pile.
She carefully picked up each thing
and of course there were boots in there!
At some point, she decided to wear the apron that friends Margaret and Karen recently gave her, and has been wearing it all morning. While wearing it, I even caught her briefly sweeping up some nut shells with her hand!
Even a sheet became interesting:
I have to say it is very rewarding when you come up with an idea that actually entertains and even inspires the chimps to do something interesting with it. Today, I felt like I got a big pat on the back from Jamie.
Burrito’s photo shoot
Porthole
The new ladder (click on link to left for video of Jamie and Foxie’s reaction to the new ladder) has created a new space for Jamie to keep an eye on things: