Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

Hope. Love. Home. Sanctuary

jane goodall

International Women’s Day

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Today is International Women’s Day, so it seems only appropriate to recognize and celebrate some of the influential women in our field, and in our lives. If you missed Tuesday’s post by Amanda focused on women in primatology, go check it out!

I think it is safe to say that Dr. Jane Goodall is an inspiration to all of us who love and care for chimpanzees. For most of us, our love of the species and individuals is shown in the daily care we provide to them, our friendships built with them, and heard about extensively by our families and friends. But Dr. Goodall has shared her love and passion far beyond the boundaries of her inner circle. She has made a tremendous impact by inspiring both current and future advocates, caregivers, veterinary technicians, and veterinarians of chimpanzees through sharing their stories and the importance of preserving their place on our planet. Beyond that, she is a symbol of success in science for young girls and women everywhere to look up to and aspire to. Her passion for chimpanzees and conservation work has spanned decades, and she continues to travel and advocate for chimpanzees and the importance of conservation to this day (she will be speaking in Seattle later this month!). I was fortunate enough to meet Dr. Goodall briefly when she visited Chimp Haven several years ago. We had the opportunity to listen to stories she shared about meeting chimpanzees living in laboratories and seeing the conditions they had experienced, and then getting to witness the lives they had in sanctuary after many years of work to get them there. It was a wonderful day getting to introduce our chimpanzee friends to Dr. Goodall, if only we could explain to them how cool of a person they were getting to see! All that to say, we admire and celebrate you, Dr. Goodall, and are so thankful for everything you have done and continue to do for chimpanzees and our planet.

Caregiver Ellen talking with Dr. Jane Goodall during a visit to Chimp Haven. My colorful shoes were painted by chimp friends!

Here at CSNW, we have many wonderful women to celebrate today…both chimpanzee and human! If you missed our Be Mine series in February, visit the links for each of our female chimp friends here: Mave, Dora, Rayne, Lucky, Honey B, Jamie, Foxie, Missy, Annie, and Negra, as well as our friend we have lost but whose memory we will always celebrate and remember, Jody.

Male chimps, at least in my experience, are usually easier to get to know and more willing to let you in. Take Terry, Cy, and Burrito for example. These lovely gentleman so readily accept you into their circle, and welcome you. My very first day getting to interact with the chimps, Chad took me to learn about appropriate interactions with Terry and he was so gentle and patient with someone who was (mostly) a stranger to him. He gently groomed the back of my hand, and let me rub him with my knuckle. The ladies, however, are often much more difficult to build friendships with. They have to test you first, making sure you are worthy of their time and friendship. This makes it all the more rewarding when they let you in though. One of the best moments I had recently was with Negra, who J.B. recently (and very accurately and lovingly) described as “a grumpy old lady.” I got to the sanctuary and was turning on lights and making my morning rounds of greeting the chimps. Neggie peeked up from her nest to look at me, and when I told her “Good morning, Neggie!” she quickly got up and made her way over to greet me. She offered me a kiss, and we sat and panted at each other for several seconds as she gave me a kiss on the back of my hand. Next she reached towards me, as if she wanted to groom the back of my hand. In my past experiences with Negra, this usually was not a well-intended gesture, so I was unsure if I should allow her to touch the back of my hand. I showed her my knuckle, politely asking if I could knuckle rub her arm, and she turned to press her arm against the mesh and sat with me for a few moments, letting me gently touch her arm with my knuckle while looking into my eyes. This moment was pure magic for me. Does this mean Negra will always be sweet to me from here on out? No. But it means she let me in, even if just for a few moments, and felt comfortable to allow me to spend that time with her. There’s just something special about those female friendships.

A kiss from Negra

Negra

Happy International Women’s Day to women everywhere! I’m including a shout out to my mom here, because I would not be the person I am today without her example of following her passions and the love, respect, and belief she has had in me at every step of my life. May you all be surrounded with such strong and influential women in your lives, and continue to change the world in ways big and small every single day! Together we can create a brighter future for generations of women to come, both human and chimpanzee.

 

A VERY Special Message

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Bidding for HOOT! 2020 opened this morning! If your breath stops for a minute and then your eyes water a little watching the video above, I get it – the same thing happened to me.

Jane Goodall has always been a voice for HOPE even when sharing the desperate reality of what chimpanzees face in captivity and as a species in the wild.

Hope for the future, with a plan to help, is what the chimpanzees and the whole world needs right now, so I hope you will join Dr. Goodall in her support of HOOT! as we work to help more chimpanzees and care for the ten already at Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest.

Bidding ends during the virtual event on September 12th. Auction items are still being added over the next few days, so visit frequently. You can still enter the pant-hoot contest and register for the virtual happy hour too!

Big thanks to Dr. Jane Goodall and the Jane Goodall Institute for making and sending us that video.

 

And big thanks to all HOOT! 2020 Sponsors, including:

EVENT SPONSOR: 

SANDRA SHARP

 

HAPPY HOUR SPONSORS:

Poppoff Logo

 

CHIMPANZEE CHAMPIONS:

Marya Barey

Pam Lehnert & Marc Warner

Krissy Brasfield of

 

Watching from a Distance

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Hanging out with chimps is fun. Watching them hang out with each other is even better.

Chimpanzees grooming each other. From left to right: Foxie, Annie, Jody, Missy and Burrito

For sanctuary personnel who are trained to engage in protected contact with the chimpanzees, developing close relationships with the individual chimps is undoubtedly one of the most rewarding aspects of the job. I cannot think of another experience that comes close to having Missy approach the caging and ask to be massaged, or being prodded with a wooden tool by Jamie as she inspects your freckles, or stomping around the hallways with Burrito to begin the day. There is something surreal about greeting, grooming, and playing with beings who are not quite human but are definitely something similar. To call these exchanges “perks” would be an understatement.

These aren’t my favorite moments, though.

What brings me the most joy is to see the chimpanzees being independent and going about their activities as if I didn’t exist. A true sanctuary allows chimpanzees to do this, if and when they choose to do so. There are times when I see the chimps foraging way up on the hill, far from the bustle of the Chimp House, and I think that this is how our relationship with chimpanzees would be in a perfect world. Our interactions would be limited to fleeting glimpses in a forest, and chimps would not be kept in captivity or subjected to exploitation. They could go wherever they wanted to go and be whatever they wanted to be.

Missy

Today, Level II volunteer Dusty prepared a mixture of chopped vegetables and chow and we spread these items outside for the chimps to forage. As the chimpanzees fanned out across the grassy landscape and climbed over the maze of wooden structures, keeping them in our line of sight became a challenge. The chimps didn’t seem to notice the group of human visitors sitting at the bottom of the hill, and I felt irrelevant as I tried to observe them with binoculars and capture them with the camera lens.

Jody
Annie
Negra (left) and Missy (right)
Jody

Negra was more interested in exchanging an open-mouthed chimp kiss with her friend Missy, Annie was busy searching for food in the prairie grass, and Jody was determined to collect the rest of the cat-tails and bring them back to the Greenhouse. Missy eventually disappeared in the bamboo, only to reappear minutes later as a fuzzy speck perched high on a shaded platform. Dr. Jane Goodall’s first sightings of free-ranging chimpanzees in Tanzania came to mind. Missy, far off in the distance, didn’t seem too different from the wild apes that Dr. Goodall watched through binoculars from a distant hillside. In many ways, I think that’s the main point.

Missy
Missy (far away)

Even if these seven chimpanzees can never experience life in the wild as their ancestors did, at least they still get to be chimpanzees.

 

 

A Nod to Dr. Jane Goodall

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Thanks to CSNW board member Elizabeth List, J.B. and I recently had the opportunity to see Jane Goodall give a presentation to a small group of people hosted by the Seattle Foundation.

Here is Elizabeth and Dr. Goodall (you may be able to tell from this photo that Elizabeth was pretty excited to share a stage with Jane):

 

And here we are, in case you didn’t believe me:

jane with jb and diana

 

Like many other devoted fans, we’ve met Dr. Goodall several times over the years and have seen her speak in very diverse venues, and she never fails to be truly inspirational. She’s a force for good in this world. Her legacy reaches every corner of the earth, in both big and small ways. She is a groundbreaking animal behavior scientist, a role model for girls and women, and a voice of both compassion and reason in matters concerning the environment and animals.

In my world, her influence is present nearly everyday because she literally wrote the book on chimpanzee behavior. When we describe chimpanzee facial expressions, vocalizations, social interactions, and all other behavior, we are most often using the terminology that developed from the hours upon hours that Jane Goodall observed chimpanzees in their natural habitat. She published papers and books that proceeded it, but the quintessential academic book on chimpanzee behavior, that every primatologist has on their bookshelves, is called The Chimpanzees of Gombe: Patterns of Behavior.

I could say that this blog post is a nod to Jane Goodall’s work, but really almost all of our blog posts, and, indeed, the sanctuary itself, in the big picture, is thanks to Jane Goodall and her work that allowed us all a glimpse into the world of our closest living relatives.

As I’ve written before on this blog – my favorite chimpanzee facial expression is, as Jane Goodall named it, “relaxed face with drooped lip.”

Among all of the chimpanzees who I have worked directly for over the years, there is no one that illustrates that face better than Jody. Here are two photos that J.B. took of Jody demonstrating the perfect relaxed face with drooped lip:

 

Jody drooped lip

Jody drooped lip profile

 

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Displaying

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In her book In the Shadow of Man, Jane Goodall wrote about a chimpanzee named Mike at Gombe who used a clever device to quickly rise in the hierarchy of his group.

Here’s an excerpt from her book, which I found on this webpage:

Mike’s rise to the number one or top-ranking position in the chimpanzee community was both interesting and spectacular. In 1963 Mike had ranked almost bottom in the adult male dominance hierarchy. He had been the last to gain access to bananas, and had been threatened and actually attacked by almost every other adult male. At one time he even had appeared almost bald from losing so many handfuls of hair during aggressive incidents with his fellow apes. One day at camp, all at once Mike calmly walked over to our tent and took hold of an empty kerosene can by the handle. Then he picked up a second can and, walking upright, returned to the place where he had been sitting. Armed with his two cans Mike stared toward the other males. After a few minutes he began to rock from side to side. At first the movement was almost imperceptible, but Hugo and I were watching him closely. Gradually, he rocked more vigorously, his hair slowly began to stand erect, and then, softly at first, he started a series of pant-hoots. As he called, Mike got to his feet and suddenly he was off, charging toward the group of males, hitting the two cans ahead of him. The cans, together with Mike’s crescendo of hooting, made the most appalling racket: no wonder the erstwhile peaceful males rushed out of the way. Mike and his cans vanished down a track, and after a few moments there was silence. Some of the males reassembled and resumed their interrupted grooming session, but the others stood around somewhat apprehensively. After a short interval that low-pitched hooting began again, followed almost immediately by the appearance of the two rackety cans with Mike close behind them. Straight for the other males, he charged, and once more they fled. This time, even before the group could reassemble, Mike set off again; but he made straight for Goliath – and even he hastened out of his way like all the others. Then Mike stopped and sat, all his hair on end, breathing hard. His eyes glared ahead and his lower lip was hanging slightly down so that the pink inside showed brightly and gave him a wild appearance.

Mike’s actions on that day allowed the other chimpanzees, including Goliath, the leader of the group, to see him as a force to be reckoned with – Mike’s use of the cans that made an unfamiliar and very loud, intimidating sound in his display was nothing short of brilliant.

Chimpanzees in captivity have access to many man-made objects that make impressive sounds, and they too demonstrate forethought in the objects that they use during displaying.

Today, when the chimpanzees were given access to Young’s Hill, their outdoor habitat, for their lunch forage, Burrito headed for the triangular structure that we call Negra’s cabin. The cabin has lexan panels that can be hit and kicked to cause a loud noise in the otherwise quiet of the hill.

I imagine it feels pretty good too:

Burrito banging on cabin

Burrito at cabin

Burrito banging on cabin

 

This one is blurry, but you can make out Burrito’s open mouth as he was ending his pant-hoot in a scream:

Burrito banging on cabin

 

The display was a little lost on the other chimps, who just went about their business – they’ve heard that one before.

 

Foxie:

Foxie

 

Missy:

MIssy on bridge

 

Jamie and Negra:

Jamie and Negra

 

Jody:

Jody with carrots

 

I didn’t get a photo of Annie – she was very efficient with her foraging and quickly returned to the cooler environment of the greenhouse.

 

Humans have their own ways of “displaying,” but sometimes I wonder if it would be helpful if we periodically displayed in the same way that chimps do. Perhaps you can try it this weekend – find something that makes a lot of noise, bang or kick it like you mean it, and let out a tremendous yell. Maybe you won’t raise in the ranks of the hierarchy among your friends, but I imagine you’ll feel a sense of released tension afterwards.

 

Jamie and her barrel

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One of my favorite stories from Jane Goodall’s book In the Shadow of Man was the story of Mike.

Mike was a small, low-ranking male who was continually threatened and attacked by higher ranking chimpanzees until the day he discovered a pair of empty kerosene cans at the research camp. By banging the cans together, Mike’s displays made a sound that none of the other chimpanzees had heard before. Imagine hearing the clashing and booming of metal on metal, when even the toughest chimpanzees were stuck shaking branches and throwing rocks. Mike may not have had the size and strength of Goliath or David Graybeard but he was clever – clever enough to rise to alpha male and remain there for six years after his first kerosene can display.

I see a lot of Mike in Jamie. While Jamie is by no means small, she clearly knows how to use objects in her displays to her advantage. While Burrito runs around clapping his hands, Jamie shows him how it’s done.

web Jamie pilo erect arrange barrel start display playroom PR IMG_2136

web Jamie drum barrel look at camera start display playroom PR IMG_2137

web Jamie display drum barrel playroom PR IMG_2139

web Jamie display drum barrel playroom PR IMG_2140

ABC News story about Chimpanzees in Entertainmnet

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Yesterday an article written by Ashley Phillips entitled “Scientists Criticize Use of Chimps in Media” was published. The full article is available here. Below are some excerpts:

Constantly using chimps for laughs leads the TV- and movie-viewing public to mistakenly believe that the animals aren’t an endangered species, a group of scientists that includes Jane Goodall said this week in Science.

In 2005 and 2006, two separate studies conducted by two different conservation organizations found the same thing: Visitors were more likely to believe that gorillas and orangutans were endangered than chimps. When asked why, the visitors all pointed to the use of chimps in the media.

This is obviously an issue that is very important to us, and this research illustrates one reason why it is wrong to use chimpanzees in entertainment. There are many other reasons which directly affect the individuals being used. Please visit primatepatrol.org to learn more and to sign up for action alerts. If you’re already signed-up, let us know about your advocacy on behalf of apes in entertainment.