Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

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A Mouthful

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We served breakfast in the greenhouse this morning, but afterwards the chimps enjoyed a chow forage on the hill. As soon as we opened the door, they raced up the hill in search of treats.

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The trick to a chow forage, if you’re a chimp, is to collect the pieces in your mouth as you go so that you can gather as much as possible and enjoy them all at once.

Foxie:

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Burrito:

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Annie:

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Sometimes you have to do some delicate rearranging to make room.

Missy:

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Brute force works too…

Jamie:

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But some things will always be more important than chow.

Foxie and Dora:

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Photographing the elusive Foxie

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One super cool and unique auction item we have for Hoot! is the opportunity to photograph the chimpanzees with a lesson from professional photographers Karen Ducey and Dean Rutz, using long telephoto lenses and other professional-grade equipment! This is one of those once-in-a-lifetime opportunities!

Maybe the winner will be able to catch some photos like these of the first elusive, then charming Foxie with her troll dolls on Young’s Hill:

Foxie behind bamboo

Foxie behind tire

Foxie trolls in mouth

foxie walk with trolls

Foxie stand with trolls in mouth

Foxie trolls in mouth 2

Foxie trolls in mouth 3

close up Foxie with trolls in mouth

 

When the wind blows

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The chimps at Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest have over 85,000 square feet of living space. Most of it is outdoors, on a hillside overlooking Cle Elum and the Yakima River.

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But the chimps don’t want to be outside all the time – like today, for example. It’s warm outside and the sun is shining, but the wind will almost knock you off your feet. So they have choices. Sometimes they hang out in the playroom.

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Other times they seek out some privacy in one of the four smaller “front rooms.”

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But the best spot on a day like today seems to be the greenhouse – all the sun and warmth but without the wind.

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Of course, nothing short of a hurricane could stop Jamie from her walks around the hill.

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Nature without nuture

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Burrito is a male chimpanzee.

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You may not be all that familiar with chimpanzees, but if you’ve ever known a male human being, you’ve pretty much got Burrito figured out. Because if there’s one thing us guys share above all else, it’s that we are compelled by forces beyond our control to do stupid things.

I like to think that each male chimp has a little devil on his shoulder that whispers bad advice into his ear all day long:

Hey – since everyone’s asleep right now, wouldn’t this be the perfect time to throw this barrel across the room and make a lot of noise?

Pssst…you know what really impresses girls? When you hit them on the back of the head.

I bet the caregiver will give you extra food if you spit a little of it back in her face.

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Don’t get me wrong…the little devil is not all bad. Chimpanzee society is organized into a dominance hierarchy, and you need the little devil to help you stake out your place. But the trick is to keep him under control. Over time, most male chimps learn that they can ignore him once and a while, or at least limit his influence. When they are young and they act inappropriately, they get reprimanded by their mothers or put in their place by the adults in the group. And at the same time, they learn to model their behavior after the adult males in their community so that they can harness all of that testosterone effectively. But what happens when you are raised without a mother or without any other chimpanzees at all?

When Burrito first came to the sanctuary, he seemed genuinely surprised when the girls got mad at him. He would fly around the room like a Tasmanian devil during his displays and when they began to react, he would push it even farther until they all ganged up on him. Afterwards, he would lay by himself and nurse his wounds, with a pathetic Why me? look on his face, as if he had been minding his own business when the girls just spontaneously attacked him.

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There are all sorts of subtle interactions between chimps that keep their society running smoothly. For example, when a subordinate chimp submits to a dominant chimp, the dominant chimp accepts this submission by extending a hand to be kissed, or reaching his arm around them for reciprocal grooming. But Burrito never learned how to be a chimp and these social situations seem to make him nervous, so he has developed an alternative strategy: close your eyes and pretend nothing is happening. Not surprisingly, this doesn’t work very well.

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In a way, Burrito is like a kid that never grew up, and adult behavior just doesn’t make sense to him. He knows that he wants to be dominant – that it’s his rightful place to be dominant – but he can’t quite figure out how to make it happen. So he has been stuck in limbo. Strong enough to be feared, but not wise enough to be respected.

Every once and a while, you get a little glimpse of that male chimp swagger, and you start to think that he may just figure this whole alpha thing out after all.

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But I wouldn’t hold my breath…

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The Importance of Foraging

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With all apologies to our east coast friends, the weather here is gorgeous! Perfect for a lunch forage on the hill today.

Volunteer Lynn decided to fancy things up by making sweet potato stuffed bell peppers, which she, Patti, and Amanda spread on the hill, along with beets and chow for the chimpanzees to find.

Before I forget – today is the last day to purchase Jody label wine from Northwest Cellars, so you should get on that now.

After making your wine purchase, enjoy the photo series below: portraits with mouths full

Though this is a fairly lighthearted photo series, foraging is serious business for chimpanzees. It’s their main job in the wild, making it pretty hard-wired, so searching for food is mentally stimulating and very enjoyable to chimpanzees in captivity.

There was one recent behavioral research study of chimpanzees in the wild that showed chimpanzees use long-term memory (as opposed to merely visual or olfactory cues) to find trees with the largest amount of fruit across fruiting seasons.

I posted a couple of additional photos from today’s forage on Jody’s and Burrito’s respective Facebook pages that illustrate how the Cle Elum Seven also use their long-term memory to check for the spots on the hill where they have previously found food. We humans are a predictable species and the chimps probably have us completely figured out.

In any case, here are a few photos of some of the chimpanzees enjoying the “fruits” of their foraging labor:

Missy:

Missy eating sweet potato

 

Jamie:

Jamie eating sweet potato

 

Jody:

Jody eat while walking

Jody eat while standing

 

I bet you can guess who:

Foxie with troll doll in mouth