Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

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Groomin’ on a Sunday Afternoon

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Okay, it’s not really Sunday, but I couldn’t help myself with the title.

We’ve talked about how important grooming is within chimpanzee society before (see this blog post from 2010 and this one from last year and you might as well check out this one about conflict and reassurance).

My favorite grooming to watch between chimps is when it’s a lazy afternoon and everything is calm and quiet. One chimpanzee will approach another chimp who is lying down or just sitting and chilling and start casually grooming them. The chimps often do their lazy grooming on the top of the climbing structure in the greenhouse. Often there are multiple partners grooming separately and sometimes they’ll move to a new partner or create a group of three or more chimps all grooming each other.

Below are some pics of Foxie grooming Burrito.

Foxie separates the hair on Burrito’s back with her fingers:

Foxie grooming Burrito with her hand

 

Foxie using her prehensile lips to groom Burrito (see this video with some other prehensile lip action):

Foxie grooms Burrito with her lips

Foxie grooms Burrito with lip 2

 

Foxie becoming distracted from her grooming by the troll doll in her hand:

Foxie hold troll doll up close

Negra’s kind of day

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Negra’s not a big fan of the cold, so she hasn’t been spending time on the hill. Even the greenhouse is a bit too cold for her these days. Her favorite spot is lounging in the warm playroom in front of the windows, so today was Negra’s kind of day. Missy stayed in the playroom during breakfast (so we couldn’t clean there until later) so after she ate, Negra got to go right back to lounging in the sunny playroom in her bed.

Jamie and her ukulele

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The chimps usually are not too interested in music (or any noise-making things in general) but today Jamie was really interested in playing this toy ukulele. She carried it around for most of the afternoon! She kept looking at it very up close, and my assumption is that she was trying to figure out how the noise was coming from the hole in the ukulele.

Annie the Acrobat

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Annie spent a great deal of time this morning doing yoga stretches in her nest:

Then, as we were getting ready to let the chimps out on Young’s Hill, the chimps got so excited!

Annie offering reassurance to Missy:

Then they got so playful!

Pure Joy

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I’ve been referring to the weather we’re having in Cle Elum as bi-polar. One minute it’s sunny and the next minute there’s a blizzard. Yesterday we caught an unexpected break – the forecast called for snow flurries, but it was a pretty mild day. As you saw from the video yesterday, Missy took full advantage of the spring-like weather and was, well… spring-like.

In addition to all of that video, J.B. also managed to get some photos of Missy and Annie playing on the hill. I probably don’t need to say this, but it is still such an amazing thrill for us at the sanctuary to watch the chimps on the hill. Each time they go out, they seem even more relaxed. Playing is now a regular occurrence, but it’s still all so new and exciting. Watching Missy with a play face wrestle with Annie makes me indescribably happy.

Missy looks like she’s going to do a pro-wrestling move on Annie:

Annie and Missy play on the hill 1

 

Annie returns with a play bite to Missy’s brow ridge:

Annie bit Missy's brow ridge play young's hill 2

 

Annie tries to give Missy the slip:

Annie Missy play young's hill 3

 

Missy grabs Annie’s fingertips:

annie missy play houng's hill 4

 

Later, Missy was sitting by herself behind a post on the hill:

Missy sit behind pole young's hill

 

Here’s a close-up of the photo above. That’s a happy chimp face:

close up missy behind post young's hill

Mixed Media Art

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Jamie likes to draw with pens and occasionally with crayons, but she’s not much of an artist with paint. She used to paint a lot when she first arrived at the sanctuary (we have some of her earlier pieces for sale in our store), but lately her focus has been more on eating the paint than actually creating something with it. However, volunteer Seana gave her some finger paint yesterday and she created quite the masterpieces!

Projects

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Jamie loves a project- pretty much any kind of project. It could be as simple as filing her nails, or stuffing a straw inside of another straw, or as complex as attempting to tear apart the building– she always has something going on. She’s often engaged in projects that are far from natural chimpanzee behavior, but as Diana mentioned in her post last week, captivity isn’t natural, and given her history, it’s not all that surprising that her interests are very human-oriented. Chimpanzees are smart, and they often mimic behavior to reach their desired end result, but Jamie is no doubt a step above the rest.

After seeing J.B.’s recent post about Jamie “sewing”, supporter Wanda Trotta found these great sewing cards for her. I took it out to demonstrate before giving them to her and she was definitely interested, as you’ll see below.