Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

Hope. Love. Home. Sanctuary

Jamie

Wood Wool Forage and More!

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Providing enrichment opportunities for the chimps and watching them enjoy the experience is truly a rewarding part of our job. Today we put out peanut butter frisbees, which is a favorite among Negra’s group. Surprisingly, Jamie shared this food puzzle with everyone including Foxie! After cleaning the playroom we noticed we had a lot of leftover wood wool. We decided to put the wood wool out in the green house and put out seeds in the wood wool for the chimps to search for. Watching them problem solve and find different tactics to engage with their enrichment always motivates us to keep creating more ways to enrich them throughout the day. Overall, making enrichment for chimpanzees is not only fun, but also deeply enriching for both chimpanzees and their caregivers.

Don’t forget to test your knowledge of chimpanzees and other primates!

Burrito tossing the wood wool around:

Negra stepped out onto Young’s Hill today 🙂

Jamie:

Goofy little Foxie:

Foxie grooming Negra in the green house:

Mirror Mania

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Chimpanzee intelligence is well-known and a specific aspect of their intelligence that I find particularly fascinating is their awareness of self as separate from others, or ‘theory of mind’. A classic experiment used to test for theory of mind in animals is the mirror test whereby a mark is placed on the face or some other body part of an animals and then they are presented with a mirror. If the animal notices the mark and reaches towards their own face instead of the one in the mirror, this indicates that they are aware that the image in the mirror is themself and not another animal. This works on a number of species we all recognize to be intelligent like elephants, dolphins, and the great apes while, interestingly, other nonhuman primates like monkeys, will fail this test. Human children typically begin to pass the mirror test around the age of two.

I’ve always enjoyed watching chimpanzees look at themselves in the mirror. Some are more interested than others in their own reflections, usually picking at marks or scabs on their face and head, opening their mouths to inspect their teeth and tongue, and sometimes making faces at themselves. Are they amused? Are they curious? What’s happening in those minds?!

To celebrate this endearing behavior, I’ve decided to put together a compilation of photos and videos of the chimps at CSNW looking at their own beautiful faces. Enjoy!

A Path Out

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We finally have a decent break from the snow and subfreezing temperatures. Though there are some more winter storms in the forecast, at least most days are going to be fairly mild in regard to temperature. In fact, for the first time in a long time, the sun has broken through the clouds to grace us with it’s warm presence. With the sun out, it was too good of an opportunity not to try to give Annie’s group Young’s Hill. After some light shoveling, a path to Young’s Hill was forged.

I must apologize, however. As I watched the pileup at the door that leads to Young’s Hill was opening, I realized I had forgotten the camera and my phone. I guess it boils down to I was too plum excited to see the color contrast of chimp and snow.

Foxie

Annie

Even with access to get their own snow, sometimes having the snow brought to you is the best. At least that seemed to be Jamie’s preference, with the addition of icicles and black cherry Stur water enhancers.

Missy also had joined Jamie in snow and icicles.

Some bonus photos of Willy B playing with Lucky a couple of days ago!

Indoor Recess

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Brrrrr! It has been cooooold. Luckily, it will start to warm up a little after today, at least in the afternoons. Since it has been so cold and the chimps haven’t been able to go outside, we have been trying to make sure the chimps have a lot of enrichment opportunities such as forages, food puzzles, and of course snow cones. As you will see in the video, Honey B has no problem keeping her friends busy! When watching the video I can’t believe all three of those girls can fit on that leaf, they have such great balance. I hope that you all are staying warm and this video warms your heart like it did ours. Also a special thanks to Grace for lending me the amazing video footage!

We have been using Stur (water liquid enhancer) to help spice up the snow that we put out as enrichment! We are getting a little low on the Stur as well as some other items, check out our Amazon Wish List if you would like to help us stock up. 🙂

Our current situation:

Jamie loved her “snow cone” was dragging the sandbox with her everywhere! Don’t worry we put out smaller snow cone buckets for everyone else:

Jamie snuggled up with her Lucy book in a cozy nest:

Rayne during the lunch forage:

Willy B:

Honey B picking through the forage in the green house:

Gordo with a whole lot of chow:

Mave:

Terry:

Snow cones, Squeegees, and Smarty pants, oh my!

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It is another cold day here at the sanctuary! The chimps spent their day with extra projects provided by caregivers to keep them occupied since outdoor activities were off the table for the day given the very cold temperatures. For the most part, this included things like adding seeds to their daily forage for them to search for inside, and providing flavored snow made with fresh snow and sugar free juice. But, as you will see in the video for today, Honey B quickly created her own project, and showed off her tool use skills and determination in the process. Her group enjoyed watching her work, and reaped the rewards when trading parts of her contraband back to caregivers for extra snacks!

Jamie’s group had a more laid-back kind of snow day with lots of relaxing in fabulous blanket nests, eating their flavored snow, and playing together with both caregivers and each other. Enjoy some photos from the day below!

Jamie and Burrito enjoying flavored snow

Burrito, Missy, and Jamie eating flavored snow

Burrito, Jamie, and Missy eating flavored snow

 

And some bonus photos from today…

A VERY handsome Cy Chimpanzee!!

Try this on for size

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Jamie received a fresh pair of Doc Marten boots a few days ago and has been asking her caregivers to model them for her. Today was my first day back from my weekend and item #1 on Jamie’s agenda this morning was to very clearly request that I don this piece of footwear for her enjoyment. Well, what choice do I have? Jamie is the boss, after all.

 

Jamie takes her boot to the one spot she where it will fit through the caging as Burrito looks on

 

Watch out for footwear projectiles – sorry it’s so blurry :/

 

Once I put it on, Jamie came down and displayed with the blue barrel

 

Mission accomplished

7 years bad luck

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Let me begin this story by telling you that today is my birthday… This is not a plea for birthday wishes, but rather an ironic cherry on top of this latest chimp house caper… More on that later.

Today, Jamie and her group received a roll of paper. This is a standard enrichment item that they receive regularly. What wasn’t standard about today, was Jamie’s mischief she decided to create with the cardboard tube at the center of the roll of paper. Unbeknownst to her caregivers, Jamie spent her morning using the cardboard tube as a a tool to knock down a very breakable mirror that we have had mounted on the outside of the caging (for many years!). We use this mirror to spy into the loft of the playroom so we can see who’s up there from our vantage point on the ground. Today though, Jamie decided it had to go.

To truly tell this story, we had to watch Jamie’s antics back on our security camera footage. Unfortunately, the video quality wasn’t great so to really appreciate today’s blog, you’ll have to use some imagination. After finding her ready to use tool, Jamie spent about a half an hour working on Project: Destroy Mirror. She tried multiple angles and methods until she successfully sent the mirror crashing down to its demise.

After hearing the crash of something shattering into a million tiny pieces, I naturally responded to the incident with a broom and worked on making sure the glass pieces were safely out of chimpanzee reach… Only to be greeted by Jamie and a handful of feces flung at my head. How dare I move her sharp glass, she had worked so hard on that! Volunteer Dusty and I spent an extra hour diligently cleaning up my happy birthday mess, artfully gifted to me by my creative chimpanzee boss/overlord.

Thanks James.

Speaking of birthdays, Burrito’s big day is coming up.  As Kelsi announced yesterday, in celebration of Burrito’s 41st birthday we will be having a photo contest to have our followers pick their favorite photo(s) of Burrito, we will then be selling the photo with the most votes.  We will post the contest every day on the blog, so you can vote once per day and you are welcome to vote for more than one photo! The contest ends on January 8th at 6:00 p.m. PT.