Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest
Hope. Love. Home. Sanctuary
Happy Day After April Fools Day! Hopefully nobody pranked any of you too bad!
I apologize for this very brief blog! Caregivers had their biweekly staff meeting, and today’s went a wee bit longer than anticipated. So please forgive me.
I do have photos though! I hope they paint a better picture of today than any words I could conjure up!
Negra
Missy
Crow
Jamie
Foxie
Annie
Burrito
Cy
Rayne
Mave
I am usually lead caregiver on Fridays, and part-time caregiver Krissy and I have come to love celebrating Fridays, or Fri-YAYs as we call them. It is a lovely reminder each week of how lucky we are to be here, and to celebrate the little moments we get to share in each day with the chimps. Today was no exception, and we celebrated with some gatorade pools for the chimps, as well as a forage on Young’s Hill at lunch.
The weather was perfect today, with the sun shining and a slight breeze. The chimps were all in a great mood, and there was lots of chimp laughter that could be heard throughout the chimp house.
Enjoy today’s video from our Fri-YAY celebrations, and some bonus photos included below. I hope you all have enjoyed just as lovely of a day as we have!
Negra at the gatorade pool
Jamie at the gatorade pool
Handsome Cy relaxing
If there’s one universal truth we learn when we work with animals, it’s the fleeting nature of life. One moment, everything seems perfect, and the next, you’re grappling with the unexpected loss of a beloved friend. Their absence is felt for days, weeks, and even years after they’re gone. This poignant experience also teaches us to never take the small things for granted and to cherish the moments of joy that come our way.
A recent study conducted by researchers from Tufts University and Harvard University analyzed play and its importance in wild chimpanzees from Kibale National Forest. They found when food is scarce, adult chimpanzees cease to play with other adults. Adults in the wild are not inherently prone to play as is, so this finding wasn’t too surprising for researchers. What they did find interesting was though adults stop playing with other adults and focus on survival during hard times to find food, mothers will continue to play with their offspring even though they too are in a struggle to find food.
Play is important to chimpanzees, especially for the children. Playing with not just others in their same age bracket, playing with adults help juveniles to build social skills as well as it’s just a good form of exercise. This finding mirrors the what has been found in humans. Play with their parents is important to children. By playing with parents at a very early age, children, both human and chimpanzee, learn what is socially acceptable as play and the correct way to interact with others.
Though play amongst adults in the wild is sparse, in captivity, it is a whole different story. As you know, the chimpanzees here love to play, both with each other and their human caregivers. It is one way they manage their relationship with each other. Some even use play as a way to reconcile after a fight. Granted things would probably be completely different had they been able to be born in the wild and raised by their mothers. That is a scenario I earnestly wish was the scenario even though I would not be here today had that been the case. You would be hard pressed to find any sanctuary caregiver who wouldn’t wish they didn’t have their job if that meant those in their care were born wild and free. Reality, however, stinks sometimes. I can’t ignore the fact this is their lives.
Diana once wrote about the internal struggle caregivers face caring for chimpanzees. Though we love our jobs in taking care of them in a setting away from biomedical testing, we can’t help but feel a sadness that this is it. They won’t be able to travel miles upon miles a day. The won’t be able to fission off and go on adventures with those whom they choose from a community anywhere from 10 to 200 individuals, and return to the group at large when they wish. That is why enrichment is a crucial component in caring for captive chimpanzees. It helps provide variety and entertainment. It helps break up the monotony from day to day.
That being said, I hope you enjoy the video of some of the ways the chimpanzees are kept busy. And yes! I am over the moon Missy has decided to play with me more. I used to only get one good interaction with her a year. Two if I am really lucky. In fact, Missy has just been playing with everybody more; both chimpanzee and human. Not naming names, but there is one individual who seems jealous when she does decide to play with me and other caregivers.
Second note about the video. YES! That is indeed Honey B you see out on the Bray. Though it was a disagreement with Gordo that brought her out there, it was her own free will that kept her outside. All together she was outside a little over 10 minutes, most of which was by herself. There is some hope that she will decide sooner rather than later to go outside with out the chaos of a fight bringing her out there.
Here are some bonus photos from today’s lunch forage on Young’s Hill!
Missy
Annie and Burrito
Gordo
Foxie
Jamie
And last but certainly not least…
Queen Negra
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.
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:
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!
