Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

Hope. Love. Home. Sanctuary

Grooming

taking care of each other

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Today Annie and Missy spent a good part of the hot afternoon grooming each other in the greenhouse.

Notice in the photo below that Missy is grooming her own arm with a twig while Annie grooms her head. Classic Missy.

Annie grooming Missy's head

 

Missy had a bit of an injury to her left eye (nothing serious), so Annie was very interested in that, but she took her time working her way around to grooming that spot:

Missy and Annie grooming close-up

 

Once she got there, she didn’t hold back:

Annie grooming Missy's eye

 

Annie grooming Missy's eye close-up

 

It turns out that Annie had a bit of an injury on the back of her left year, which I noticed because Missy noticed it. In this photo and in the one above when Annie starts grooming Missy’s eye, both chimpanzees have a relaxed face with slightly parted lips – a sign of concentration.

Missy grooming Annie's ear

 

Though injuries and even old scabs are really interesting, there’s always different areas to check out – here’s Annie removing something that was stuck to the hair on Missy’s arm:

Annie grooming Missy's arm

 

Who needs a spa when you have such fastidious friends?

Annie grooming Missy's head close-up

 

Grooming is so cool

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We’ve talked about the importance of grooming among chimpanzees before, and it’s pretty well known what an essential aspect of life grooming is for most primates. Below is a video of very good friends Burrito and Foxie grooming, with Missy (off-camera), occasionally also grooming Burrito.

There’s a lot of cool things about grooming. In a comment on a post back in 2009, I mentioned some of the following:

The basics: aside from the social aspects, grooming is the removal of dirt and debris and the tending to wounds (licking and picking scabs). It’s why chimpanzees don’t need baths – they do a really good job of cleaning themselves and each other – no water necessary.

The debris found on the grooming partner is not necessarily consumed, even though the lips are usually involved in grooming because chimpanzees use their prehensile lips, almost like another set of fingers, for many activities like inspecting objects, turning the pages of a magazine (in captivity), and especially in grooming.

Increased grooming often occurs after a conflict to reassure and/or “make up” with one another and to cement social bonds. Grooming has a calming affect, which is easy to see when you observe chimpanzees grooming one another. A study of wild chimpanzees that used non-invasive methods to collect urine samples after grooming bouts found that oxytocin (sometimes referred to as “the love hormone”) levels were higher in bonded grooming partners than in samples collected of chimpanzees who had not been grooming or had been grooming with a “non-bond partner.”

Regarding lip movements during grooming: it is common for chimpanzees, as well as other primates, to “lip smack” or “teeth clack” or make other “sympathetic mouth movements” when grooming (also when performing other fine motor behaviors – like many of us who move our tongue a certain way when we’re really concentrating on a task).

Each chimpanzee does his/her own thing, Burrito is a lip smacker (he may teeth clack on occasion too), Foxie is a teeth clacker, and Annie makes raspberry sounds with her lips. The intensity of the mouth movement/noise will increase if something (especially a wound or scab) is found during grooming.

Some scientists have hypothesized that these sympathetic mouth movements were an evolutionary step towards spoken language. Our friend Gabriel Waters and [former] Central WA University professor Dr. Fouts published a study on this theory a few years back: http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=1349990, and there was a book with this premise called Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language, which I admittedly still need to read, that argued that gossip for humans is what grooming is for chimpanzees and other non-human primates.

So, with all that information, here’s the video of Burrito and Foxie strengthening their friendship through grooming today:

 

Grooming Tools

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web Missy OA self groom stick 5_MG_5684

Chimpanzees mainly groom themselves and one another directly with their hands and mouths, but a couple of the chimps at CSNW use tools for grooming. Missy likes to groom herself with a splinter of wood. Sometimes she just scratches herself, but other times she can be like a surgeon with her instrument as she picks at a bump or scab. In fact, volunteer Deb once saw Missy use a wood splinter to open up a small abscess that had gone unnoticed by the staff. As a former nurse, she said the process was not all that unlike how a doctor would perform what they call an I&D (incision and drainage – sorry to gross you out), though hopefully your doctor would use a sterile instrument and not a stick.

Jamie, on the other hand, uses tools to groom her caregivers. I think this is mainly because of what she wants to groom. As you may know, the caregivers at CSNW only present certain parts of their bodies to the chimps for contact (e.g., a bare elbow) and only in limited circumstances. This is because there is always the potential for a chimpanzee – even someone that we are good friends with – to grab us and injure us. So if Jamie wants to touch our fingers or the tops of our shoes, she has to use a tool. Jamie knows this and seems to enjoy grooming with a tool even more than using her fingers. Sometimes she even tries to reach into our pockets or lift up our shirts to see our bellies.

We often describe Jamie as “intense,” and if you look at her eyes while she is grooming or using a tool, you can see the focus and concentration that she has. You can also see her display sympathetic mouth movements as she grooms, which Diana described in the comments section on a previous blog post.

Another Quiet Day

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Today, Burrito was checking out his reflection in a plastic mirror.

Foxie enjoyed some bottled water (we’re still waiting on tests of our well water since it was contaminated during the fire).

Missy and Annie spent some time grooming. Missy likes to groom herself with a tool – in this case she ripped a splinter from a log. If you look closely you can even see some dandruff falling.

Annie likes to pick Missy’s nose. Missy tolerates it but doesn’t seem to enjoy it. I don’t blame her – Annie doesn’t bite her nails down like the other chimps do.

 

Loving Negra & Shopping for Sanctuaries

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First – there’s still time to shop until your heart’s content at many fabulous businesses that are giving 10% of their proceeds to the Sanctuary Century 100-mile charity bike ride in Portland that will benefit Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest, Hope Animal Sanctuary and Out to Pasture Sanctuary. Lots of the participating businesses are online, so there’s no excuse not to blow some money on chocolate, vegan food-stuffs, clothes, jewelry and more. If you’re on Facebook, go to the Sanctuary Century 10% Fundraiser Day event page and hit “more” to see the list of participating businesses. If you’re not on Facebook, you can see a not-quite-complete list of businesses on this announcement from Herbivore Clothing Company. You can also just make a straight-up donation here: http://www.firstgiving.com/fundraiser/TheSanctuaryCentury/thesanctuarycentury2012

Now that you’ve shopped or are getting ready to shop or donate, below are some precious photos from today of J.B. interacting with Negra. It’s a very special occurrence to have these tender moments with Negra because she is the least interactive with her caregivers and often does not like to be touched.

We respect Negra’s wishes and only touch her when she asks to be groomed, which the chimpanzees do by pushing their bodies against the caging. We are big fans of safety at Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest, and we only do physical interactions with the chimps that do not put ourselves in a position to be bitten or grabbed, so that means that our fingers (or anything else attached to us, for that matter) never enter the fencing when the chimps have access to the other side.

JB grooming Negra's back

 

Negra was really enjoying this attention from J.B., as you’ll see from the three photos below. The chimps know the rules as well as we do, so they know what to expect when a human (only trained caregivers!) touches them, and they choose which parts of their body to present. They have each other for the big hugs and intense grooming sessions that help keep them a cohesive group of chimpanzees – they don’t rely on or need us for that.

JB groom Negra's neck

JB grooms Negra's belly

JB grooms Negra's belly 2

 

We’ve mentioned “getting kisses” from the chimps before. You can see what we mean by this in these two photos. You’ll notice that the only parts of J.B.’s body that he is letting Negra kiss are his elbow and the the back of his hand, and Negra sticks her lips out of the fencing in order to touch J.B., making things safe. This also allows Negra to invite J.B. to be kissed by putting her lips outside of the fencing, so we know when she’s looking for that kind of interaction and when she isn’t. Negra was giving J.B. some pretty long kisses today. Eventually, I felt like I might be intruding on a personal moment between them, so I decided to take the camera and let them have their privacy.

Negra kisses JB's elbow

Negra kises JB's hand

 

Foxie and Negra groom

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Here’s some really sweet photos of Foxie and Negra grooming in the warm greenhouse yesterday. I especially like the one where Foxie is poking Negra’s ear!

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