Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest
Hope. Love. Home. Sanctuary for primates.
I first started working with chimpanzees in 1998, and I have been with the Cle Elum Seven for the entirety of their life at the sanctuary, even meeting them before they arrived on June 13, 2008.
And I still can’t believe that I have the privilege of caring for these amazing, playful, temperamental, intelligent, sensitive, wild, unpredictable, joyful, unique people.
I took some photos of Burrito this morning that caused me to admire his face and think about the chimpanzee facial features that I love.
The top of my personal “awesome chimpanzee facial features” list is the brow ridge (also known as supraorbital torus, ridge, or arch).
Though much less pronounced in chimpanzees, humans have a supraorbital ridge too – our eyebrows normally sit near the bottom of our arches.
Each chimpanzee has a somewhat unique brow ridge – I wonder if you could identify a chimpanzee by a brow ridge “print” like a fingerprint.
I will never say that I have a favorite chimpanzee, but I will admit that I have a favorite brow ridge: Jody’s. I like how deeply arched it is with lots of wrinkles, giving it a decidedly heart-shaped appearance:
Here’s a look at everyone else’s supraorbital tori:
Missy:
Negra:
Foxie:
Jamie (that’s also her profile in the 2nd photo in this post):
Annie:
Burrito:
I woke up thinking that I should feature Jody on the blog today. She’s a bit more elusive than some of the other chimpanzees, so we don’t get as many photos and videos of her.
She does have her routines, though.
Today, we spread a forage on the hill at lunch, and Jody, true to form, collected the food she wanted, came back inside, and emptied it on the deck while she sat on the lower part of the platform in the greenhouse.
Then, she spent some time relaxing – we often see her in this position:
She did a little self-grooming:
Graciously allowed me to take some close-up photos of her beautiful face:
Volunteer Lynn and I were talking about Jody’s very round eyes that often appear to be hopeful or excited about something:
She soon retired to the cooler playroom for a post-meal siesta:
It’s important to have priorities in life, and the chimpanzees at Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest are good at deciding what is top priority (usually food) and what is a close ranking second, as you’ll see in the video below.
Here’s what the back of the lower mount for the GoPro camera looks like. I caught this photo last week of Annie standing next to it. The steel mount, custom made by J.B., has a hinge and opens up to slip the camera in and then has a padlock to secure it.
Annie gets more beautiful with each year that passes at the sanctuary. She is also more likely to be in a quiet moment where she doesn’t mind her human friends taking photos, so I was able to get a few very close-up photos of her beauty this afternoon. Which photo below is your favorite?
Negra was enjoying this morning’s breakfast forage on the hill:
But she soon found herself caught in a spring rain shower, so she headed for the greenhouse and grabbed as much food as she could along the way:
Jody and Annie took their sweet time, since they were already hanging out in the cabin:
Even though the rain didn’t last very long, most of the chimps spent the day in the greenhouse, where they knew they would remain warm and dry. Burrito was kind enough to let me take some close up photos:
Jamie can’t sit still all day so she ventured out and made Diana walk a few laps around the perimeter of Young’s Hill with her. Every time Diana got back down to the building and thought she was done, there was Jamie waiting for her to go again. How could you say no to Jamie?
