Burrito can be a little intimidated by the other chimpanzees. Because of his social anxiety, he tends to play much more with his human friends than with his chimpanzee family, but he and Foxie have a special friendship (learn more about that here).
Cle Elum Seven
All Play, All the Time
Foxie has her choice of play partners here at the sanctuary, from troll dolls to other chimpanzees to caregivers.
Eyes on Apes website
One of our missions at Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest is to advocate for apes everywhere, which is why we developed the program Eyes on Apes. The idea is to have one centralized area for people to learn about issues that apes face both in captivity and in the wild, while providing tools for you to take action.
There’s a lot of great information on the pages for each of the issues (entertainment, pets, roadside zoos, biomedical research, and free-living issues in Africa and Asia).
One thing we just added were some pages on individual trainers in the entertainment industry. This is a really nice resource for people to have when you hear about a chimp in a commercial or movie and are curious what it is like for them with their trainers. Each page lists facts about the trainers, any relevant USDA citations, and links to our action alerts about productions these trainers were involved in.
Please share this site with your friends, and help raise awareness for apes everywhere! You can ask them to sign up for our Take Action list in order to get action alerts and help make a difference for apes everywhere.
Take a look through all the pages—there’s been some makeovers throughout the site, like this informational map showing the current vs. historical population of African apes:
And, since this was a little bit of a wordy post, I thought I’d throw in a picture of Negra from this morning’s breakfast forage on Young’s Hill:
Playfulness
The weather in Cle Elum today finally has me convinced (and it seems like the chimpanzees as well) that Spring and Summer just might possibly be considering staying. It’s difficult to say definitively but there certainly seems to be a positive correlation between sunshine and play behavior here at Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest. Plenty of playful chimpanzees in residence today!
In the video below you’ll see two kinds of play, chimpanzee to chimpanzee, and chimpanzee to caregiver. If you watch the video with the volume turned up you can hear a perfect example of caregivers engaging in chimpanzee behaviors during filming. This is just one of the ways in which our staff and volunteers help to facilitate a healthy and happy home for the chimpanzees. To learn more about caregivers engaging in chimpanzee behaviors read about it here!
Carried Away
On a typical day at the sanctuary, we put out around 60 blankets for the chimpanzees. They use the blankets to build large, soft nests.
Jody, in particular, loves her blankets. (Watch a video from a few years ago of Jody building a nest out of a million blankets here.) She loves her blankets so much that she often picks up her whole nest and carries it with her when she decides to move from one area to another. While the other chimps tend to abandon their nests when they leave the area and build a new one elsewhere, it seems Jody doesn’t want to risk being left blanketless.
Relaxing
I found some photos on the computer taken by Elizabeth and Lisa a few days ago. Just looking at these pictures makes me feel so relaxed!
Playing with Dolls
Foxie can always find a willing play partner in her troll dolls.
