Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest
Hope. Love. Home. Sanctuary
It’s the time of year when everyone just wants to curl up with a blanket or ten, chimps included. Earlier today, I posted this photo of Negra to our Facebook page:
This gave me the idea to go through some of our older photos and collect some of the chimps cuddling up. Negra is the biggest blanket enthusiast, but the others enjoy getting comfy too.
Negra:
Jamie:
Jody:
Missy:
This morning Foxie was sitting in Front Room 4, also known as the “Portrait Room”. Foxie had seen me with the camera and looked intrigued, so I asked Foxie (and boss Jamie of course) if I could take her photo. They must have both approved and I must say Foxie is a very photogenic chimp.
Bonus: Jody enjoying some morning peanuts!
Bonus Bonus: Jody taking her chow on Young’s Hill this morning!
Walking through the chimp house this afternoon, I came upon this multi-player, cross-species grooming party.
Piloerection, noun (pi·lo·erec·tion): “bristling of hairs due to the involuntary contraction of small muscles at the base of hair follicles that occurs as a reflexive response of the sympathetic nervous system especially to cold, shock, or fright”
-Merriam Webster
For humans, we are familiar with piloerection as goosebumps or when the hair on the back of our neck stands up. Since chimpanzees have longer, thicker hair that covers their entire bodies, we can really notice when their arousal levels change.
Here is Jamie working up to a display. In addition to grabbing her barrel so she can bang her fists on it and push it around, her hair starts to stand on end to make herself look bigger (and more intimidating):
Here is a pilo Annie showing the loose neighbor’s cow just how scary she can be:
And an upset Negra getting reassurance from Jamie (who is also pilo):
Here is Foxie looking a little “fluffy”:
And Missy who is clearly a bit chilly:
Burrito spends a great deal of his time with his hair standing up:
This morning Jody rushed up to Missy with extremely pilo hair. This set off an urgent game of chase around Young’s Hill:
In case you haven’t heard, yesterday’s Giving Day for Apes was nothing short of a success! Check out the above video for a thank you from the Queen herself.
In other news, today after lunch, wadging paper primate chow bags seemed like top priority for Annie, Jody and Foxie. Jody and Annie had to take theirs to go so they could go spy on a big yellow construction vehicle that was backing up to the chimp house. Every day we get to see so much progress on our new building. It’s truly an exhilarating experience to be a part of!
Here’s Foxie and her wadge:
Jody:
And Annie:
My favorite photo is this profile of her. You can really see just how full her bottom lip is!
One of the first things new chimp house volunteers start learning is how to identify each of the chimpanzees. When you’re meeting a group of chimps for the first time (or the first ten times), they can often look frustratingly similar to one another. Eventually, of course, they start to look like individuals and you wonder how you could ever have mixed them up. But there’s a definite learning curve.
It helps to be able to spend some time just staring at each chimpanzee, so I just made these videos for our volunteers, in which you can see each of the seven chimpanzees from every angle, just being themselves. I thought some of our blog followers might appreciate them also. And if you’re not interested in working on your chimp ID, the videos make seven good excuses just to look at each of these beautiful chimps for several minutes.
(For extra credit, click on each name below to learn some identifying physical characteristics for each individual).
Jody:
It was just three weeks ago that we separated Jody from the group in order to stitch an injury to her eyelid. If you didn’t know it had happened, you probably wouldn’t notice that her left eye looks a little different. I suspect in another three weeks even we won’t be able to tell which eye it was.
(Incidentally, when I saw the photo above, I immediately thought of this photo of Jody’s daughter Andrea who lives at Save the Chimps in Florida. Like mother, like daughter!)
Dr. Erin did a great job of the procedure, no doubt. Plus chimpanzees have this uncanny ability to heal very quickly (thank goodness!).
I keep thinking back to the days after the procedure and how each step was an affirmation of why Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest exists and the role of the humans at the sanctuary.
When the injury happened, Jody was clearly irritated that her eyelid was kind of just hanging there (sorry for that graphic image), though she was not irritated enough that she ignored the rest of her lunch. On the contrary, she went right back to eating when the fighting had stopped.
The humans figured out pretty quickly that we needed to fix her eyelid because it serves such an important function of protecting the eye. After a little while, Jody seemed to agree with us, and she did not protest when we invited her to be separated from the other chimpanzees with the doors closing behind her.
I really believe that she knew she needed our help.
It took her the whole next day after the procedure to completely recover from the anesthesia, and she allowed me to sit with her (on the other side of the caging) and offer her sips of water in between her naps.
The day after that, however, she wanted to be back with the other chimpanzees.
We reunited them the next day, but then separated Jody again when Dr. Erin decided she needed some time away from Dr. Missy and any other overly zealous grooming partners.
Though it wasn’t an issue to separate Jody, she was definitely not as content to spend time by herself this time around. She was constantly watching what the group was doing, vocalizing along with them, and hopeful that she would be back with them each time we operated the doors. After a couple more days of healing, there was another reunion, and this time it lasted.
Here’s what I love about Jody’s reaction to all that happened: She accepted our help and let us pamper her a little, but the second she felt even halfway better, she wanted to be with her people. The humans are not her people. She has a family of chimpanzees – they are her people. She’s not related to any of them, but they are her family.
She wanted to be back with them even after sustaining a pretty intense injury during a fight with these same people.
And that explains the role of the humans at the sanctuary. We are protectors and sometimes fixers, up to a point. We make sure that the chimpanzees have food, medical care, and an interesting and comfortable environment.
But the truth is that they need each more than they need us. They have their own lives to lead.
That is one of the reasons why we are working hard on the Bring Them Home Expansion Campaign in order to bring more chimpanzees to the sanctuary. We don’t know how long these seven chimpanzees will be here, but we know that as long as they are alive, they will need a family of other chimpanzees.
For Giving Day for Apes this year, we are highlighting the expansion campaign. We hope you will join in the donating on September 25th to help expand the family at Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest and be a part of providing them with what the really need.
