Burrito:
Foxie:
chimpanzee
New Mirror
Not long after the chimps arrived, supporter Tamela found an acrylic mirror that we hung on the playroom wall. It has gotten pretty scratched up in the last 2.5 years, so J.B. just recently replaced it with a new one. And not unlike her reaction when it was first hung in January of 2009, Jamie spent a good deal of time trying to figure out how to remove it.
Hello, Spring
Volunteers Stephanie and Kate came to the chimp house this morning armed with a bounty of goodies (edible and non-) for a party celebrating the arrival of spring!
Wine grape vines for the chimps
It’s that time of year again – right around the time of our wine tasting event, the chimpanzees get to enjoy the bounty from Washington State wine growing too. Thanks to Phil Cline at NHV for letting us pick up a truckload of vine trimmings for the chimps! So far they don’t seem to have a favorite varietal, but just give them time.
I searched for a video to provide a comparison of Jody’s nesting behavior to what chimpanzees do in the wild. Here are a couple, in case you are interested: Female chimpanzee making nest from tree leaves at Gombe Stream National Park and bonobo making a treetop nest. They weren’t easy to find becaues if you do a Google video search for “chimpanzee nesting” – most of the results are videos from Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest.
Sippin’ for the Seven photo montage
Enjoy the photos from Sippin’ for the Seven by Ron Sullivan Photography in the photo montage below!
Also, if you attended or purchased a ticket for Sippin’ for the Seven and were unable to attend: Click here to take survey (if you haven’t already)
Chimps’ Choice!
It’s been a while since we had a Chimps’ Choice item, and we have an awesome idea!
We love to challenge the chimps with puzzles. Not to cause stress, of course, but to keep them stimulated and enriched. Jamie loves nothing more than a project but she’s so smart that it is difficult to come up with a project for her that actually challenges her. Something that would take me an hour to figure out, Jamie masters in less than 5 minutes. The puzzles that Cari donated the other day are just perfect and we would love to have more. The website has a variety of puzzles, but not all of them will work for us, so I added the specific ones we think will be best to our Amazon Wishlist. They are the PVC Puzzle, the hanging sliding feeder, the Forage Raisin Ball, and the Discovery Food Ball. All of these puzzles have a chain attached to them and hang on the outside of the caging. They encourage tool use and creative problem solving skills, and I suspect they will be just the thing to keep Jamie and the others enriched and occupied for years to come.
***Update: The company that sells these puzzles, AbsolutePrimate.com, has a $75 minimum, so if you would like to participate, instead of ordering them through the website, please send us a donation and we will order them. Be sure to mention Chimps’ Choice or puzzles in the gift note section.
Jody
Jody is a pretty serious chimpanzee. She seems to take everything she does very seriously, whether it’s greeting a caregiver, playing (somewhat reluctantly) with one of the other chimps, or kicking back in a nest. This is one of the things I find (simultaneously) most intimidating and most endearing about Jody. Check out Jody’s “serious face”:
