Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

Hope. Love. Home. Sanctuary

Nesting

Peace and earthquakes

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A little while ago I was out in the greenhouse and snapped this picture of Jamie sleeping. I love seeing the chimps asleep – they look so peaceful. And it’s especially great to see Jamie looking peaceful since she’s always so serious and busy!

jamie sleeps

About 10 minutes later, I was sitting at my computer and the chimp house shook dramatically. Earthquake! Jackie and I looked at each other at the same time that the chimps all started alarm calling. We went to make sure everyone was ok (and the building as well) and to give the chimps some reassurance.  Everyone’s fine! But the chimps were rattled and I don’t think Jamie will be taking another nap this afternoon!

Wine tasting (and wine nesting)

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This weekend, CSNW supporters will be enjoying a sampling of some of Washington’s best wines at our Sippin’ for the Seven fundraiser. We didn’t want the chimps to feel left out, so we gave them their own wine tasting, of sorts.

Yesterday, Diana and I took a drive down to Boushey Vineyards in Grandview, WA. Owners Dick and Luanne Boushey were kind enough to allow us to collect vine trimmings for the chimps (thank you!). Today’s trimmings were from French clone Syrah vines – soon we’ll get to see if they prefer Merlot 🙂

Web Jody eating vines OA_MG_5616

Web Jody eating vines 2 OA_MG_5660

Web Annie eating vines OA_MG_5646

In addition to eating the vines, the chimps enjoyed nesting with them…especially Jody, as you might have guessed. This morning, she seemed intent on outdoing her paper nest from last week.

Phantom Nesting

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Although we have never witnessed Burrito build his own nest with blankets, as we have mentioned in other blog posts, he will often sleep in someone elses’ nest. Today, I caught Burrito engaging a behavior we, at CSNW, call Phantom Nesting. This is a behavior both he and Foxie occasionally do, which involves clapping and running their clasped hands along the fence, the wall, and/or the floor. Interestingly, this is not a behavior that is seen in the wild, and is rarely seen at all. As far as we know, the behavior has only been observed in a few captive individuals, but definitely seems to be related to nesting.

*Editor’s Note (from Diana): we don’t know much about this behavior. We’d love to hear from others who work with chimpanzees both in captivity and in the wild to find out if you’ve observed nesting behavior in the absence of “normal” nesting material and/or if you’ve seen the same clapping and arm movements described above and shown in the video below.