Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

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chimpanzee

not-so-shy Foxie

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This is the third post about my initial visit with the Buckshire Seven

Foxie is a small chimpanzee with a dark, inquisitive face and a somewhat mischievous charm. She was born into captivity in 1976, fated to be used by humans for their purposes. Her caregiver at Buckshire has described her as shy, but everyone from CSNW who has visited her has found her initial shyness to be short-lived.

For the first hour or so during my visit, Foxie remained mostly out-of-view in a corner of a cage farthest from the door. But I could tell she was paying attention to everything and was curiously assessing the situation. I think she felt safer remaining near Negra, who also occupied the farthest of the four small cages. Foxie warmed up to me once I began to give out peanuts. She put her hand behind her to catch the peanuts that I dropped into the food chute of the cage, and she was very pleased that I made a point to return frequently to ensure she got her share.

When I had given out all of the peanuts, Foxie ventured into the next cage, climbed up as high as possible (which is only about six feet), pressed her belly to the caging and looked down. I had a rolled-up newspaper in my hand and I reached up with this and tickled her belly. She was thrilled. She came down to the floor, bobbed her head (a chimpanzee gesture communicating play) and put her belly up to the caging again. For the rest of my visit, she was very active and wanting to play, and I indulged her as much as possible. By the end of the visit, Foxie was sitting in the first cage near her friend Burrito. I am looking forward to seeing Foxie and Burrito romping in the playroom at the sanctuary and I expect she will take advantage of every inch of her much expanded world.


Diana

Negra Nesting

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Negra is a large chimpanzee with a Buddha-style belly. She is surprisingly pale, given her name, partly because her face is naturally not as dark as many chimpanzees, and partly because she has lived without sunlight for most of her life. She shows her age; it is hard to picture Negra as an infant clinging to her mother as her family traversed the forests of her African home. She was captured from this home in 1973, only a few years before it became illegal to import chimpanzees into the US from the wild. Her mother and other family members were probably killed in order to capture Negra and bring her to the United States.

Among other things, Negra was forced to produce infant chimpanzees who were to be sold into research. She had three babies taken away from her for this purpose. Negra was denied the opportunity to raise her own children as she would have in the wild, but she maintains a maternal quality which has probably helped in her leadership role at Buckshire. Her calm physical presence alone clearly relaxes the less dominant individuals of the group. She has been described as the queen of her clan, and it is easy to see why.

During my visit, Negra did not seek my attention until I began to hand out newspaper. She took every piece of newspaper that was offered to her, and then went to what was clearly her spot on the platform ledge of the last cage. She carefully folded and placed each sheet of paper to make her small nest – a natural instinct in chimpanzees. After giving out the newspaper, I would occasionally go over to Negra’s side of the building and quietly call her name. She would immediately (although slowly) get up, come over, and look into my eyes. I would give her a handful of peanuts, she would softly grunt and then return to her bed.

The regular enrichment given to the chimpanzees at Buckshire consists mainly of newspaper, peanuts, hard plastic balls (which Negra showed no interest in), and occasionally some “special treat” like snow from outside. It is a far cry from what she needs and deserves.

It is difficult to say how many more years Negra will live, but she clearly needs and deserves to live out the rest of her life in a sanctuary. Negra deserves to be forever free from the fear of life as a laboratory subject. She deserves to have choices in her life. She deserves to have room to walk, run and climb. She deserves to have access to the outdoors. She deserves a daily supply of a wide variety of food. And she deserves lots and lots of blankets so she can finally make the bed that will truly make her feel content.


Diana

Playing Chase With Burrito

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I am a member of Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest’s Direct Care Committee, and I recently traveled to Pennsylvania to meet the future chimpanzee residents of CSNW. It was incredible to spend time with these seven individuals. They are all amazing! Like you, I am really looking forward to helping get them into sanctuary. They really, really deserve it. This is my first post about the visit and I have chosen to write about Burrito. More posts will follow in the coming weeks that describe my experiences with the other chimpanzees. Hopefully this added information about the chimpanzees’ personalities will inspire you to become a Chimpanzee Pal with one of our future residents! Burrito already has one Pal that I know of – the folks at MailChimp, a company providing email marketing services. Read MailChimp’s blog post about their donation to the sanctuary and sponsorship of Burrito.


I just had to write about Burrito first. Being the only male within a group of six females, as well as the youngest chimpanzee, he certainly stands out. Personally, I am drawn to rambunctious adolescent male chimpanzees and their playfulness. Although Burrito is going on 25 (far from chimpanzee adolescence) I can tell he still has some bad-boy teenage qualities. He spent the first 30 minutes of my visit shaking the doors of his small enclosure. At Buckshire, there are four interconnected cages each the size of a small bathroom. All seven chimpanzees currently live together in this small space. Although the cages are attached, Burrito spent most of his time in the cage closest to the door of the building. Rattling the cage door was his display – a chimpanzee’s way of letting an outsider know they have entered his turf, as small as that turf may be. His rattling was rhythmic and persistent and quite loud in the small space. It was also almost completely ignored by the rest of the chimpanzees of the group. This made me realize two things – that Burrito does this quite frequently, and that his female companions really don’t take him too seriously.

Once he had made his point about me entering his territory, he calmed down and I was able to engage him in some play. I crouched down, clapped my hands, slapped the floor and slowly started to walk away from him, looking back as I did. Burrito read these signals and began a game of chase with me – he on his side of the cage, and me in the narrow corridor between the cages and the window-less wall that constitutes the chimpanzees only “view.”

There is nothing that makes me happier than playing with chimpanzees, but playing chase with Burrito made me happy and sad at the same time. I was thrilled that he trusted me enough so soon to show his playful side, but I was so sad to be trying to play chase in these cramped quarters and to know that I would have to leave him there in a few short hours.

I can’t wait to be part of providing him with what he needs and deserves in his new sanctuary home. I know that my support of the sanctuary will ensure that Burrito has lots of toys to either play with or destroy (I suspect the latter), and that there will never be a day that will go by without Burrito having an opportunity to play a good game of chase.


Diana

Should chimpanzees wear dresses?

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We received the following question from a donor:  I was looking at your wish list and I have a question: what are the clothes, hats, and shoes for? I assume the other stuff is all for the chimps or facility, but do they dress up in people’s clothes?

Good question!  Those items must seem like very strange requests.  The purpose of giving captive chimpanzees ‘human items’ is to alleviate boredom.  Chimpanzees are extremely intelligent and curious and, of course, are not meant to live in captivity.  In the wild they travel great distances each day, forage and sometimes hunt for food, manufacture and use tools, build nests to sleep in at night, defend their territory from neighboring groups… the list of complicated behaviors goes on and on.  The #1 challenge of caring for captive chimpanzees is figuring out how to keep their minds active – because they can get extremely depressed when they don’t have enough to do.

Because chimpanzees who have been raised in captivity cannot be released into the wild, we must do whatever we can to make their environment complicated and interesting.  Giving them access to human items is a great way to do so.  Most captive chimpanzees have been raised either with or by humans, so objects like shoes and clothing are familiar to them.  Some chimpanzees actually like to put clothing on (probably because they’ve seen humans do it and they are imitating) but most often they will use clothing to build nests.  Free-living chimpanzees create nests in the trees out of branches and leaves and this seems to be an innate behavior because captive chimpanzees do it as well, but with blankets, sheets, clothing… any fabric they have access to, really.  Different types, colors, and sizes of clothing gives them more variety for nest-building.

Of course, it’s important to distinguish between giving chimpanzees access to human items and forcing them to use human items, as we often see in entertainment situations.  People often think it is funny or cute to see chimpanzees wearing clothing, and this is a perspective that we DO NOT take.  But we do believe that we are obligated to give them access to any (safe) items that have been known to alleviate boredom in other captive chimpanzees.

Hello world!

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Welcome to the Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest blog! We’re excited to be blogging and can’t wait to keep everyone updated with the latest and greatest news from the Sanctuary. So stay tuned, once we figure out how to use this thing, we’ll have lots of updates and news to share.