Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

Hope. Love. Home. Sanctuary

conflict

Chimpanzee Dynamics – It’s Complicated

by 5 Comments

As I was putting together videos for today’s blog, some playful moments between Foxie, Jamie, Burrito and Negra, I realized they presented a nice moment to highlight the complicated intricacies of chimpanzee politics and friendships. We have observed a lot of complicated and sometimes downright confusing moments as we have undergone the reintroduction process with the group of 9, constantly looking to understand their relationships and dynamics to determine next steps, but “it’s complicated” can be applied even in long-standing groups of chimpanzees like Jamie’s group.

Chimpanzees can be brutal. They fight and injure each other, and being low ranking within the group hierarchy can be a tough role to fill. Lower ranking individuals endure more stealing of things like food from higher ranking individuals, usually don’t get first access to the most exciting items (like more novel or high-value foods or enrichment), and can become the recipient of redirected aggression during conflicts within their group even when they weren’t initially involved because they are an “easy” target. Maintaining status as a high-ranking individual isn’t easy either, and depending on the individual and their strategy for maintaining status in their group, they may put themself in harm’s way more frequently in attempts to maintain or improve their rank. An example of this in action could be Willy B displaying and hitting Lucky as part of a dominance display, which then results in many chimps chasing and hitting at Willy B.

Chimpanzees are also capable of remarkable forgiveness and reconciliation, and form meaningful relationships that shape not only their own lives but greatly impact the lives of those around them as well. While the moments of fighting, aggression, and tension can feel very big for us as the humans caring for them, the chimpanzees are often quick to overlook another’s transgressions, and spend time grooming and playing to ease tension and build relationships. Being high-ranking is often not as simple as who is the biggest, strongest, or fastest. Relationships with the other chimpanzees can highly influence where an individual falls in the hierarchy, as friendships can translate to having support during conflicts (or a lack of support), and can limit or expand an individual’s aspirations for higher rank.

I say all that to say, witnessing moments of play between high-ranking and often imposing Jamie and low-ranking Foxie is all the sweeter when you recognize the complexities of their relationship. While Jamie can be intimidating and domineering, they can still find common ground and enjoy moments of play. Burrito and Negra too have a complicated relationship – they have a standing play time each day as they wait for us to finish cleaning their playroom, but Negra is also often a target for Burrito when he feels the need to display. While there are moments of tension, they enjoy many more moments of play and companionship. Being a chimp is just plain complicated!

Drama and Dora on the Bray

by

I mentioned this incident in a comment on my blog post from last week. There was some interest from blog readers to see the footage of this fight in which Dora is interested enough to go onto the Bray, but apparently only wanted to watch, not participate, as she made a break for it when the intensity increased.

Dora can be a force when she does get involved in conflicts, so it’s just as well that she chose to stay out of it this time.

While fights are not uncommon, even in groups like Cy’s that fight more than the average, the amount of time they spend in conflict is minuscule compared the amount of time they spend in friendship.

Most of their days are filled with comfort and joy… which is why we are holding the third annual Comfort and Joy Quid Pro Throw online auction from October 31 – Nov 20. We will be adding items throughout, so check in daily.

*New this year* – if you register for the Comfort and Joy online auction, you’ll be a guest (virtually) at Lucky’s birthday on November 6th! So, don’t delay, register today.

 

Superhero

by

Two things to note before you watch the video below:

  • The video shows the chimps fighting. If that’s not your cup of tea, we understand.
  • If you choose to watch, you must do so with the sound on so you can hear the narration that attempts to explain some of what you will see. The chimps will be loud at first but we’ll turn down the volume on the screaming and pant-hooting early on in the video.

Showing the chimps in your care fighting may not be what they teach in nonprofit PR/fundraising school, but I’m always hopeful that people can learn to understand and appreciate chimps as they are while continuing to support them and the sanctuaries that care for them. Sanctuary life is filled with fun, happy moments. To a lesser extent, it also contains unsettling, even terrifying moments. They are still chimps, after all.

As I mention in the video, we are often of two minds in this job. First and foremost, we are caregivers, fretting over each bump and scrape the chimps receive and agonizing over every decision we make with regard to their care. This is the mind we inhabit in the midst of a conflict. But we are also primatologists and enthusiastic observers of chimp behavior. We are the people that, like many of you, were glued to Jane Goodall documentaries as kids and who find the complexities of chimpanzee social dynamics endlessly fascinating. And as I watched the footage of this conflict, I felt my 20-year-old self, just entering the field, marveling at each and every interaction. Perhaps you will feel the same.

If by chance you are new to Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest, this group is the result of the integration of two smaller groups: A group of six, led by Cy, and a group of three, led (mostly) by Willy B. Almost immediately after their integration in 2022, Willy B accepted Cy’s dominance and established himself as the #2. But Willy B does not have Cy’s social skills, and from time to time that can get him into trouble with a few others in the group.

Similar to what is seen in the literature, the rate of conflict in this larger group hasn’t gone down all that much since the initial integration; it ebbs and flows and at times it may even be higher. But the conflicts are shorter and result in fewer injuries (I don’t believe in jinxes, I don’t believe in jinxes, I don’t believe…). This conflict was unlike most in that it lasted a long time; as I say in the video, this is likely because of Gordo’s unique inability to calm down. Prior to the integration of these two groups, Gordo would occasionally get this upset with Cy. Cy, having nearly unlimited patience, would just let himself be chased by Gordo until Gordo eventually wore himself out. But that was a low-ranking male venting at the alpha, who clearly felt no threat to his own safety or status. Here, the relationships between the lower-ranking males is less well-defined. And thus the stakes are higher.

There’s an important caveat that I should mention here: I describe some of what I think I’m seeing, but any time I read a matter-of-fact description about relationships and behaviors as complex as those in chimpanzees, my BS detector starts to go off. Half the time we just don’t know or we drastically oversimplify things. So let me admit that up front. And this, I should add, is with the benefit of instant replay and slow motion—now maybe you can see why we say we don’t always know what happened in real time when the chimps get in fights.

Oh, and another one: Cy gets top billing in this blog post and he certainly has the most influence over the outcome, but boy that Honey B has some guts. And there are so many other interesting interactions that I didn’t touch on, many of which are also influential. Alpha males always get the headlines while the females quietly do much of the work. But this alpha sure did put on a show.

This video also doesn’t include what happened after the fight, which in some ways is the most interesting and important aspect of chimpanzee relationship formation and maintenance.

I could probably go on all day about this so I’ll stop here. Feel free to ask questions!

Conflict on the Bray: the Day Everyone Went Outside

by

We’ve been talking about it for a few days now – the conflict that led Mave, Dora, and Honey B to go onto the Bray habitat.

So, here’s your birds-eye view of most of the excitement! This is a video best suited for a bigger screen like your computer monitor or television.

I saw the middle to the end of the conflict in person. It was quite loud. It’s quite nice to be able to watch it without sound.

Even while I was watching in person, I had this thought that both groups seemed more similar to free-living chimpanzees than I had ever witnessed before. It was scary, to be honest, because we didn’t know what was going to happen, but the maneuvering was also fascinating.

Maybe, just maybe, it will help some of the chimps explore more, like it seems to have with Lucky!

Conflict and Reconciliation

by

A quick word of warning: If you do not wish to see footage of chimps being aggressive towards one another, please skip this video.

Recently, Grace posted to our social media accounts asking people to submit questions for Q&A posts on our blog. One of the questions jumped out at me: What is the best and worst part of your job? I immediately thought of dozens of things I like best about this line of work – we get to provide the chimps with life-changing and long overdue experiences like going outdoors and climbing trees, we help them form new friendships, we are treated on a daily basis to displays of intelligence and emotion that many people still believe are reserved for humans alone, and we get to do the thing we love with people we enjoy working with in a breathtakingly beautiful environment. Oh, and I get to drive a tractor sometimes. Maybe I should have put that first? Anyway, how could I choose just one “best” thing?

But when it comes to the worst part of the job, there’s no question in my mind what it is: it’s the violence.

Chimpanzees are naturally aggressive. Not all the time, mind you, or even most of the time. Aggression actually makes up a very small part of their daily activity and is just a tiny facet of their overall demeanor. Most of their waking hours are spent resting, quietly grooming, exploring, and playing. And most of their interactions with one another are overwhelmingly friendly and cooperative – and often extremely gentle, tender, and loving. But these hours upon hours of peace and playfulness are punctuated by boisterous displays of dominance and, on occasion, acts of real, raw violence – violence between the very people we have dedicated our careers, and in many ways our whole lives, to caring for. For us caregivers, it amounts to a lot of worrying about a thing over which we have very little control.

Which brings me to this video. I’ve been wanting to share it for a while, for a couple of reasons. First, when a chimpanzee gets injured here at CSNW, people naturally ask who was fighting and why. Our answer is usually some form of “I don’t know” and “I don’t know.” It’s not because we aren’t paying attention, but rather because the nature of chimp fights make them hard to interpret at times. They can happen quickly with little warning, they rarely occur between only two individuals, and the individuals who get into a fight in the first place are not always the ones who come away injured. I’m grateful for the many books and documentaries that have demonstrated chimpanzees’ remarkable capacity for strategic aggression, but reality is often so much messier. Yes, chimps sometimes exhibit coalitionary aggression for the purpose of social status. But in addition to being Machiavellian, chimpanzees are also xenophobic, insecure, jealous, petty, anxious, and just plain cranky, and any and all of these can serve as the impetus to bite someone’s finger off.

Second, it’s important for people to get an accurate picture of how chimps live. We don’t want anyone to think that life for chimpanzees is nothing but eating, playing, and climbing trees. While we often discuss their injuries, we aren’t usually in a position to show the fights in which they occurred. As you can see, however, we can occasionally capture them on our security camera system.

But perhaps most importantly, I want to show you how they make up afterwards. Chimp societies wouldn’t hold together very long if the individuals within them didn’t have the capacity to reconcile, and that is the saving grace for both the chimpanzees themselves and our own ability to care for them. Because no matter how bad things get, they usually find a way to move forward together.

…

So…the video. For what it’s worth, I’ve made it unlisted on YouTube so hopefully anyone watching will find it here and will also be reading this for context.

In the video, which is from December, you witness the beginning of the conflict as Willy B and Terry run out into the Greenhouse. Terry is upset, which you can see as he screams and splays himself out on the catwalk before running back inside for reassurance. The video picks up again in the Playroom, where Terry and Willy B face off momentarily by the door downstairs. The group congregates upstairs and Rayne then approaches Mave who is at the top of the tree structure. As Willy B moves in, possibly to protect Mave (though that is certainly open to interpretation), he comes face to face with Gordo. And that’s when all heck breaks loose. It took me several minutes of playing over and over in slow mo to piece together what was happening. For a time, I even falsely accused Rayne of a crime she didn’t commit. Sorry, Raynie!

We often differentiate between minor chimp fights and more serious ones based on whether or not they “ball up.” Balling up occurs when they grapple and bite, as opposed to chasing and hitting, at which point the caregivers can no longer tell who is who in real time. When chimps ball up, we know that we are going to have to look for injuries afterwards – checking ears and counting fingers and toes as they tend to their wounds. In this case, the chimps ball up for only a brief moment. They leap down to the floor through the fire hose vines and Willy B escapes up the stairs only to find his finger caught in Lucky’s mouth. He somehow manages to withdraw his finger intact and escapes through Playroom 3 to the Mezzanine where the screaming and reassurance-seeking continues. Fortunately, everyone made it out with only minor injuries.

At breakfast the next morning, Gordo – who was uninjured in the fight and whose “side,” you could say, came out on top – approached Willy B to reconcile. Breathy panting serves to express friendly intentions, and Gordo offers both his backside and his fingers and toes to Willy B. Isn’t it ironic that the way to make up after a fight in which you tried bite each other’s toes off is to place your toes in each other’s mouths again? While Mave and Rayne similarly reconcile, Gordo asks Willy B to follow him upstairs to groom. And once again, all is well.

…

So that’s a chimp fight and the aftermath. Some are more serious, many less so. Some last for only a minute or two while others have gone on for as long as 20 minutes. The boys fight the boys, the girls fight the girls, and the boys and girls fight each other. It happens in new groups and in groups like the seven that have been together for 17 years. They are loud and fast and frequently complicated. Serious fights are relatively rare but they’re part of caring for chimps and while you never really get used to it, you do come to accept it. Running a tortoise sanctuary would certainly be better for the ol’ blood pressure. But if you love caring for chimps, as I do, you can’t pick and choose which parts you get to experience.

I’m sure this post raises more questions than it answers, so ask away and I’ll do my best to respond below! And my thanks to all of you for allowing us to explore a more serious and fraught topic from time to time. Hopefully it helps present a truer version of sanctuary life for both the chimps and the humans that care for them.

They Always Do

by

Winter here on the eastern slopes of the Cascades can be difficult. We go to work in the dark and return home in the same. The wind stings, the cold air bites. Thick mats of snow and ice cover the landscape. Wintry conditions turn scenic drives across the mountain passes into foggy, wet, anxiety-inducing ordeals.

Yet, we carry on.

We play in the snow with friends, take our vitamin D supplements, struggle to keep our houseplants alive, finally read the books we bought in a frenzy over the summer, stay in touch with friends and family, exercise in some loud building under fluorescent lighting, and make the most of the relatively warm days when we get them.

Eventually, the days start feeling longer again. The wind stings a little less, the temperatures rise a little. The snow melts to reveal the wet dirt underneath. We begin to make plans for the coming weeks without worries of getting stranded, spinning out, or missing a flight. One day at a time. Suddenly, we find ourselves standing in an elk-trodden meadow of balsamroot and lupine watching the spring thunderstorms roll by.

From last week into this past weekend, the chimpanzees have had quite a bit of drama and it’s been a challenge to navigate. But, as Diana and Jenna pointed out in their respective blog posts, there has also been a lot of rest, recovery, and reconciliation going on. Chimps are great at filling the intervals between conflicts with productive, calming activities: building nests, grooming companions, playing chase with caregivers, foraging on some greens you found on the Hill, etc. Perhaps the best way to get you and your loved ones through hard times is just to give someone a breathy pant, eat an icicle, pile up some blankets, take a nap, and move forward. As someone told me recently, why worry about the whole necklace when you can just keep putting beads on the string?

Cy’s group, the chimpanzees who have been fighting the most frequently lately, have actually been relatively peaceful for much of their tenure as an integrated social group. It wasn’t always that way; we can all remember last spring when their union was so new and fragile that we gave them nonstop supervision, around the clock, for weeks on end. If you had visited me in the foyer one of those nights and told me those new relationships would continue to grow and thrive for six months before enduring a rough patch like this one, I would have been ecstatic.

Yes, there are tough times that seem like they will never end…

…but they always do.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The distant glow of sunrise over the Chimp House front entrance at 4:44am on June 23, 2022. It wasn’t an unusually important day, but I have this photo from my overnight shift that I have never posted here before. I looked back at my notes from that morning. The chimps slept relatively peacefully after a string of tumultuous nights.

Dr. Erin watching the chimpanzees via the security cameras:

Gordo taking a moment to relax today in the playroom:

The hallway between the Lupine and Marmot Mountain playrooms after a day of cleaning:

Jamie peering down from atop a platform (where she had made a humongous nest):

The shovel that now lives outside the greenhouse door (which keeps getting blocked in with ice).

Conflict

by

We had a question recently on YouTube wondering if the chimpanzees fight less than other groups. It made us realize that we really don’t share that part of their daily lives much. I tried to provide some answers as to why in this video, but maybe there are other reasons that are less obvious (number of likes on Facebook? I hope that’s not it!).

We do have a category called “Fights” for blog posts, so you can check out previous posts on the subject here.

Let us know what you think – does this surprise you or make you uncomfortable to see the chimpanzees fighting?