Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

Hope. Love. Home. Sanctuary

Cle Elum Seven

Contagion

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Excitement spreads fast in a chimpanzee group. All it takes is for one chimp to get excited or upset, and the whole group is on fire before you know what happened. The chimps respond to each other’s vocalizations even when they’re not in the same room. If someone starts pant hooting in the playroom, you can bet that someone will answer with a pant hoot of their own from the greenhouse. It makes sense that it would benefit a chimpanzee – maybe especially a captive chimpanzee – to be responsive to others’ emotions and moods. I know that if I lived in an enclosure with whirling dervish Burrito, I’d be on guard at the first sign that he was getting worked up.

Today shortly after we let the chimps back into the playroom after cleaning, there was a very brief and mild scuffle. You’ll see how quickly Jamie and Annie respond.

Lunch With the Chimps

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The chimpanzees eat three meals a day, and at most mealtimes they’re asked to shift out of a certain area so we can close off that area to clean. (There’s nothing quite like food to motivate!) Lunch is an exception to this rule. Since we don’t do any cleaning at lunch, the chimps have free run of the entire sanctuary during the meal. The server chooses an area to serve, and the chimps come to that area to get their food, but they can then take their food wherever they choose.

Today volunteer caregiver Becca started serving lunch in the greenhouse, but the chimps quickly let her know it was too cold, so she came inside back inside the building to serve in the front rooms. Most of the chimps tend to stay put throughout the meal, but Missy – always on the move – likes to show up at the beginning of each “course”, grab her serving, and take it off to enjoy in the playroom.

Today’s lunch consisted of tomatoes, bell peppers, celery, and green onions.

The way to a chimpanzee’s heart…

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If we asked the chimpanzees what their caregivers’ #1 priority should be, “giving us food” would be the unanimous response. We serve other purposes too – we keep their enclosures clean, we serve as play partners – but nothing’s more important than food.

Because humans are always separated from the chimps by caging, we have two main strategies for getting food to the chimps. Most meals are served directly to the group by a trained caregiver. The chimps all gather in one place and the caregiver hands food to each chimp. This allows us to make sure that everyone’s getting enough food.

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The other type of meal is a forage: we close off a part of the chimps’ enclosure and scatter their meal around, and then let them back into that area so they can collect their own food. The advantage of forages is that they encourage “species-specific behavior” – basically, they let the chimps act like chimps. Free-living chimpanzees spend much of their day searching for food. The other advantage of forages is that the chimps lose their minds with excitement. As they watch us scatter their food, they break out in deafening food squeaks, pant hoots, and anticipatory screams.

Today volunteer caregiver Sandra and I set up a lunch forage in the greenhouse, and then watched the excitement unfold.

Annie:

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Missy:

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Burrito:

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On the bright side…

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Winter isn’t the chimpanzees’ favorite season. They don’t like to be cold or wet, so as much as they’d love to be having adventures outside, they end up spending most of their time indoors. Winter isn’t all bad, though. There’s something to be said for snuggling up with soft blankets on a cold day.

Negra:

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Annie:

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Jamie:

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Playful Jamie

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Chimpanzees exhibit a variety of innate behaviors and vocalizations in different contexts. During play, for example, chimpanzees will often head nod to one another and laugh, which for a chimpanzee is a breathy pant with the top teeth covered by the upper lip. In grooming, chimpanzees will often lip-smack, teeth-clack, or blow raspberries. These behaviors seem to be used to communicate with other individuals that they are interacting in a certain context. Co-director Diana wrote a blog entry last year on grooming, which includes more detailed information about these behaviors and what they mean. As caregivers, we also use these behaviors and vocalizations during interactions to connect with the chimpanzees using their communication methods, which helps build rapport.

In the following video, Jamie plays with staff caregiver Elizabeth. In the beginning of the clip you can hear Elizabeth breathy panting during this tug-of-war/tickle interaction. Jamie then decided that intern Holly’s boot needed some TLC, so look closely at Jamie’s face and mouth to see her lip smacking as she grooms.

First snow day

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We all woke up to a couple inches of snow this morning and while the chimpanzees were not interested in going outside today, they were interested in eating the snow! Missy, Burrito and Annie were ready and waiting when I opened the door to Young’s Hill and immediately started food grunting when they saw the snow. They each took turns stretching out of the doorway to grab handfuls of the fluffy stuff. After breakfast was served, Jamie came in to nest bringing along of cup of snow to go that she had gathered:

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Some of the chimps don’t mind collecting their own snow, but others are quick to figure out it’s much easier to just ask their caregivers to fetch it for them. Foxie sat at the window blowing raspberries with gusto until I brought a bucket in for them to snack on. After cleaning, we filled buckets with snow and sunflower and pumpkin seeds and you should have heard the excitement!

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Jody inspected her options before relaxing with a big mouthful on the stairwell:

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Burrito’s plan was to just grab a bucket and shovel in as much as possible:

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And Foxie made the rounds and spent time at several buckets:

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If you look closely, you can see Foxie rubbing her happy toes together.

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And of course eating all that snow can make a person cold! So after the snow fest (which included snow in cowgirl boots!), Jamie bundled up to get warm:

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I couldn’t get any photos of Negra as she is now frequenting her “winter” nesting area which is, of course, in a cozy corner out of sight. But rest assured the Queen had grabbed herself her very own bucket of snow snacks to enjoy from the comfort of her nest.