Jamie and Foxie spent some quality time with trolls today. I still can’t get over how integral troll dolls have become in the lives of these chimps…
Jamie
Jamie and Foxie’s wild play
The chimpanzees all have different comfort levels when it comes to intensity of play. Jody and Negra, for example, engage in play less frequently and less boisterously than some of the other chimps. When Foxie and Jamie get together, though, they completely let loose. There’s lots of stomping, slapping, and (play) biting. This morning they spent about 20 minutes running around the playroom like maniacs.
New benches! + What’s with all the reassurance?
J.B. has already applied his new welding skills by fabricating two new awesome benches for the playroom. Thanks to Barb from Ohio for aiding in the project by “adopting” J.B. and purchasing the workshop heater from our amazon.com wish list.
The video below mentions reassurance, which is really common among chimpanzees. This simplifies what can be complex behavior, but, in general, asking for reassurance can be a submissive or peacekeeping behavior, or it can be a way to ask, “are you on my side?” Giving reassurance can be saying, “everything’s okay between us” or “yep, I’ve got your back.”
In the first instance in the video, Jamie is submitting to Burrito and Burrito accepts her submission by doing a quick arm over gesture as he runs by. Looking at this 2 sec interaction in isolation, you might suspect that Burrito was dominant to Jamie, but looking at their interactions overall, that’s not the case. It could be that Jamie just wanted to acknowledge Burrito’s display but let Burrito know she wasn’t interested in starting any trouble with him, so she could get to work looking for food.
In the second instance in the video, Foxie is being submissive to Negra, probably not because Foxie thinks that Negra is going to start something, but because Foxie is respectful of those who are higher ranking and often plays the role of peacekeeper, keeping the group calmer by giving reassurance to whoever seems excited.
Chimpanzees are a bit tightly wound in general, and a high arousal situation such as a great food forage can quickly turn into a fight. So, in any high arousal situation, chimpanzees will be doing a lot of asking for and giving reassurance, even if the situation is a happy occasion. Sometimes the exchange of reassurance is more just a sharing in the excitement of the moment than a submissive or dominant behavior.
Jamie and choices
While going though blog posts the last couple of weeks, I was struck by what I wrote about Jamie after meeting her for the first time. This was written three years ago, almost six months before she came to Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest. This is what I wrote (link to the original post here):
Jamie is someone who could be referred to as a “character.” She clearly likes attention and demanded a lot of it from me and the other Direct Care Committee members (J.B. and Sarah) who accompanied me on my first visit to Buckshire to meet the chimpanzees. Jamie was the most gregarious of the group and was full of energy. She was clearly pleased to have the rapt attention of new people and really enjoyed having her feet tickled (with newspaper) and playing chase.
The first physical feature that I noticed about Jamie was that her belly had almost no hair. This was obviously due to “over-grooming” – Jamie picks out the hair on her belly and the skin underneath the hair. Over-grooming is considered a form of self-mutilation and can be the result of a stressful, unpredictable life or a sign of utter boredom. Often, this type of behavior gradually disappears when a chimpanzee is moved to a sanctuary which provides a stimulating environment.
A big element that is missing from the day-to-day life of the chimpanzees at Buckshire is the lack of choice. Born into captivity, Jamie’s entire life has been determined by the humans who claimed ownership over her. Her early years were spent as a “performer” in a circus, and then she was passed on to the biomedical research industry (note: we now know she lived with an animal trainer for nine years, but we don’t know how or where she was used during that time). There are very few opportunities to make choices in her daily existence at Buckshire. For Jamie, I believe this will be the biggest benefit to her new life at CSNW. I imagine that once she figures out there are so many things that she can do and ask for, she will probably be quite demanding of the time and energy of the staff at the sanctuary. And they will, no doubt, be elated to indulge her desires.
Jamie did, in fact, completely stop plucking the hair from her belly when she arrived at the sanctuary. She began to do it again this summer after an illness, though it was much, much less severe than before and not very noticeable (nothing like this photo of her bare belly when she arrived). Sometimes this happens with stereotypical behavior – it returns even though the environment has vastly improved. Hair plucking / over-grooming is a really common behavior in captive chimpanzees. We’re keeping an eye on Jamie and making sure she has things to do, which is partly why we started the “enhanced enrichment” in the evenings.
What really struck me about the post, though, was the last two sentences. Did I call that one, or what?? Jamie is by far the most demanding chimpanzee at the sanctuary. A lot of what we do to enrich the lives of the chimps is with Jamie in mind. And I do love to indulge her curiosity and need for stimulation. Just tonight she saw me bringing in some boots to put away and motioned for me. I stopped and lined up all of the boots in front of the caging. She nodded with appreciation in her Jamie way, then indicated that she wanted one, so I gave it to her. Then she wanted another, so I gave her a second boot. In the end, she was satisfied with four boots, but probably more satisfied with the interaction and the process of asking and receiving.
Imaginary play
This morning, while Elizabeth and I were cleaning the playroom, Annie was sitting in the window. She playfully opened her mouth for a “drink of water” through the glass. She’s not the only chimpanzee at CSNW that we have witnessed play this game. We caught a short clip of it:
This reminded me of something I saw, but failed to get on camera a few weeks ago. Jamie was sitting on this small toy horse and scooting along the playroom floor. She then lifted her leg up high and over in an exaggerated dismount. Two things stood out to me- the first was how interesting it is to me that chimps engage in this type of pretend play, and second- how truly little we know about the chimps’ histories. She seemed to know exactly what she was doing when she “dismounted”. We suspect she was a “pet” prior to the lab, but was she raised by a cowboy (hence the boot obsession?), did she just see this on TV?, or was she taught to ride a horse at some point? We may never know, but it was a fascinating moment none the less.
Here’s a photo of the horse, for scale. 🙂
Jamie’s intense love of boots
As a fitting tribute to Kathy Cochran’s birthday, I used the beautiful telephoto lens she gave us way back when with the new camera that the board of directors recently purchased for us. It’s so great to have high quality equipment to capture moments at the sanctuary and share them. Perhaps one of these photos will be in the book Sanctuary: Year Three.
Jamie’s love of boots…
Play with me
This morning Jamie seemed to be feeling a little ignored. She displayed a couple of times, probably in an attempt to draw some attention to herself, but volunteer Denice and I were busy cleaning the front rooms, and the other chimpanzees didn’t seem too impressed. She eventually convinced Foxie to play with her by “stealing” one of her trolls. Once she had Foxie’s undivided attention, she proceeded to drag her around the playroom by her feet.
