Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

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Mave Conquers the Bray

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I could tell that Mave was working up to something big. For months, she’d wait to catch my eye and then shuffle swiftly (this is Mave’s fastest speed) towards the Bray. And as soon as she’d exit the chute, she’d make a beeline straight up the hill. I would join her on the other side of the fence, but to be honest, I’d kind of given up on the idea that she’d make it to the top. She just couldn’t get past that one spot.

But never underestimate Mave, or any chimpanzee for that matter. Maybe now she’ll teach her friend, Dora, to appreciate all the Bray has to offer.

Jamie’s Morning in the Clinic

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Last fall, Jamie underwent an exam to follow up on concerns about her reduced activity levels and her growing belly. Both are more common with age, but we thought an exam was warranted to rule out other causes. And indeed, ultrasound examination did reveal a possible cause: the presence of uterine fibroids, which have the potential to cause significant pain and discomfort. After much research and consultation, Dr. Erin decided to take a twofold approach to managing Jamie’s condition: First, Jamie would receive a subcutaneous hormonal implant that would help shrink the fibroids. And second, those fibroids that could be removed would be extracted using a procedure (and specialized piece of equipment) known as MyoSure.

After receiving an anesthetic injection, Jamie is wheeled to the clinic.

Kate Uselman, CRNA, places an endotracheal tube while 4th-year vet student, Larrea Cottingham, observes—Dr. Erin is always happy to help train vet students who are interested in careers in sanctuary medicine! Dr. Dan prepares Jamie for gas anesthesia.

Dr. Chavez performs the MyoSure procedure while Huong Johnson assists with ultrasonography.

The MyoSure procedure utilizes a hysteroscope and a special cutting and extracting wand to visualize and remove the fibroids. The team watches the procedure on the monitor.

Jamie receives the hormonal implant. With chimps, implants are often placed between the shoulder blades so that they don’t try to remove them.

CSNW Vet Assistant, Krissy, monitors Jamie’s vitals as she recovers back in Front Room 1. We loosely ties scarves to the chimps’ wrists and ankles so that they can’t try to climb or walk away before they are coordinated enough to avoid injury. The scarves also help us safely manipulate their body positioning to maintain an open airway. Providing veterinary care to potentially dangerous animals requires creativity!

We’re so grateful to Dr. Dan Low, Kate Uselman, Dr. Chavez, Huong Johnston, Ashley Mellotte, and Larrea Cottingham for volunteering their time and services to help Jamie (and Dan and Kate for also braving a monster snow storm on the pass!). Thanks, as well, to the folks at Hologic for supplying some of the MyoSure equipment. And thanks—as always!—to our own Dr. Erin for all her research, networking, recruiting, and leadership.

Jamie’s care team (Ashley not pictured) poses for a photo while monitoring Jamie’s recovery.

Jamie takes advantage of a Squishmallow-filled nest while recovering—her scarves still tied to her wrists and ankles.

With those pesky scarves untied, it’s time for a drink.

Dr. Erin serves Jamie some baked sweet potato for dinner.

As long as that snow doesn’t hit us down here in the foothills, I’m sure Jamie will be back on her patrols tomorrow—and hopefully, feeling a whole lot better.

 

 

 

 

George Picnics with his New Family

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Outdoor forages are a great source of enrichment in the warmer months. George got to search for plenty of treats last summer when he was on his own, but today marked the first time that he got to have lunch outside with his new family since they were fully integrated. He was so excited!

Here are a few bonus photos of Foxie taking her dolls along for the ride during her group’s lunch forage:

 

 

 

 

Love for Mave

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Today we continue our Valentine’s series with some love for Mave.

Mave was born on September 25th, 1989  to mother, Lulu, and father, Conrad, at the Laboratory for Experimental Medicine and Surgery in Primates (LEMSIP). She is half-siblings with own very own Terry, whose father was also Conrad. We didn’t know this at first but should have guessed by the floof alone. I can only assume Conrad was rather hirsute, as well.

Mave (L) and Terry (R)

Like all laboratory chimpanzees, Mave was taken from her mother at a very young age. She was immediately paired with another infant chimpanzee named Goliath. Mave was reportedly an anxious infant, and Goliath became her rock. Throughout her childhood in the lab, she would continue to rely on Goliath for support.

When LEMSIP ended its chimpanzee program in 1996, Mave, Goliath, and 30 other chimpanzees were transferred to the Wildlife Waystation in California. Mave and Goliath stayed together at the Waystation until Goliath’s death, some time around 2018. I can only imagine how devastated Mave must have been. She was soon moved to live with Willy B and Honey B, and as the Waystation began to close, this unlikely threesome came to live at CSNW.

Despite her upbringing, Mave has a high degree of social intelligence. Anyone who can successfully navigate life with Honey B and Willy B would have to, I guess. She’s the kind of chimp that can fit into almost any group—she knows who to groom, who to console, who to support, and who to put in their place. And she does this all with a quiet ease that belies her anxious childhood.

A key to her ability to make friends is the thing I consider to be her superpower: hugging. I have to admit, I sometimes tire of people asking if we wish we could hug the chimps. They are adults, they have each other and don’t need us, it’s far too dangerous…I could go on. I really don’t want to hug the chimps. But if I were a chimp? I’d be first in line for a hug from Mave. Despite the disappointing outcome of our initial effort to integrate Mave’s group with Jamie’s, I wall always remember this hug (and I’m sure Burrito will, too).

Within a couple of years of that first attempt, Mave’s group was once again being integrated with another, and this time she met someone who would take all the hugs she had to give: her new friend, Dora.

These two hit it off instantly. Sometimes I wonder if Dora somehow filled that Goliath-shaped hole in Mave’s heart.

But like so many love stories, this one was complicated, as their families didn’t always get along. And eventually the two groups had to be separated. But while the other chimpanzees at the sanctuary remain in their fixed groups, Mave and Dora (better known as Mora) get to cross back and forth between groups so that their friendship can continue.

Like her friends Willy B and Honey B, Mave had a difficult time becoming comfortable with the outdoors. But she worked hard to overcome her fears, and now she can often be found soaking up the sun on one of the platforms in her 2-acre habitat known as the Bray.

We’re grateful to Mave’s Pals for supporting her life in sanctuary. If you’d like to give Mave a (virtual) hug, consider being her Pal today!

Love for Willy B

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I have to confess, I chose Willy B as my subject for this “Love for…” series on a day that he was being particularly difficult to love. He had woken the other chimps up four times the previous night with his incessant banging and antagonizing, and thanks to the magic of closed circuit camera technology, I’d also had the pleasure of lying awake and listening to his late night performances. The lack of sleep initially made it hard for me to muster up much sympathy for the guy. But isn’t that the perfect time to remind myself—and you—what makes him so deserving of our love?

Willy B was born on November 30th, 1990, at the Laboratory for Experimental Medicine and Surgery in Primates (LEMSIP) in New York. According to his records, his father was Stu. His mother is known to us only by the number that would have been tattooed across her chest: 526. The “B” in Willy B’s name served as a reminder that although he was born at LEMSIP, one or both of his parents belonged to the Buckshire Corporation, making Willy B their property, too. Like his companions, Willy spent much of his childhood in a cage suspended off the floor.

When LEMSIP ended its chimpanzee program in 1996, Willy B was transferred with over 30 other chimpanzees to the Wildlife Waystation in California. He would remain there until 2019, when it too began to close down.

We selected Willy B and his companions, Honey B and Mave, to be the first of the Waystation chimpanzees to move to CSNW due to their small social group and relative isolation at the facility. Willy was our main road trip companion for the 1,000-mile journey, as his transport cage occupied the space just behind the driver’s seat. And I am still feeling the adrenaline from the time he went from sound asleep to trying to topple the van over with his intense cage-shaking on a busy section of I-5 in Central California, all in the blink of an eye.

Little did I know it then, but that incident would be a metaphor for life with Willy. I’ve written about his challenges before so I won’t belabor the point here, other than to say that he has thus far had a hard time remaining in good standing in social groups with anyone other than his two original companions, who have a tolerance for his shenanigans worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize. But knowing how he was raised, we shouldn’t wonder why he struggles with being social. The question is, why don’t they all?

And when you consider how far he has come, Willy’s story is less a tragedy and more a story of hope. Watching him overcome his fear of the outdoors was one of the most inspiring things I’ve been privileged to witness.

And despite the two-year integration of Willy’s group and Cy’s group ultimately ending in failure due to Willy’s chronic self-sabotaging behavior, he managed to make many new friends who often brought out the best in him. He will certainly have more opportunities for additional companionship in the future.

Even when he’s at his most chaotic, you can’t help but love Willy for his endearing quirks. Like the way he plays chase with his caregivers—no eye contact allowed! Or his childlike amusement with Slinkies and bouncy balls. Or his incessant requests to watch videos on our phones, specifically videos of the cute girls (like Jamie) next door. Or the way he is compelled to maximize the crunching sounds when he eats lettuce and celery by chomping down with his molars with his mouth wide open.

It’s true, Willy B can be a but much sometimes. There are times when he is even too much for himself, and he has to find a quiet, secluded place to reset.

I talk a lot about how much I admire Cy and Rayne, and they deserve every ounce of our admiration. But do all of our heroes have to be so noble? What about the guy that was born with the deck stacked against him and gets just a little bit better each day? What about the guy who has to struggle to be good? Isn’t that struggle itself something to be admired? True or not, this is what I will be telling myself when Willy B wakes us up again tonight.

Because I love Willy B, despite who he is and—even more so—because of who he is. We’re so grateful for his Pals who feel the same way, and we hope you will consider sponsoring him, too.

Terry, Terry, Big and Scary

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If you’re Rayne or Lucky, you know that Terry’s a big softy. I mean, he cries every time Willy B makes a face at him! And everyone knows he’s not much of a fighter unless he has a whole crew backing him up. Lots of bark, very little bite.

But if you are Missy or Annie, he’s got to be one of the toughest guys ever. He’s so big and fuzzy! And those chest-beat displays—who does that? A gorilla, that’s who! Who is this guy?

That’s the magic of an electric fence. You can talk a big game and never have to back it up.

Sanctuaries often maintain multiple groups of chimps living within sight of one another. This runs counter to the natural territorial behavior of free-living chimpanzees but is often made necessary by practical considerations such as limited space and the economical advantages of shared infrastructure. Our friends at Fundació MONA in Spain looked at how having close neighbors affected the chimpanzees in their care and, as you might expect, there were some downsides. Increased vigilance and self-directed behaviors during some inter-group encounters were taken as evidence of stress. And while they didn’t find the contagious aggression seen in some other studies, in which conflict in one group makes conflict in another group more likely, we can anecdotally report that is does occur here from time to time.

But, as they noted, there are also a number of advantages to these arrangements. For chimps like Terry, they can offer a way to blow off some steam without stirring the pot within his own group—and if the girls across the way happen to be impressed, all the better. For chimps like Burrito, who is coming up on Season 18 of his own reality show, it can be enriching to have a new show with an entirely different cast to watch through the window. And when the chimps across the way are getting everyone riled up, there’s an opportunity for some affiliative interactions within the group. After all, nothing bonds an in-group like an out-group.

There are days when I think Terry would readily trade Willy B to another sanctuary and never have to see his group again. But what would he do without his legions of adoring fans to the other side, to whom he must certainly be The Greatest Chimpanzee That Ever Lived?

George, His New Best Friend, and the Third Wheel

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George engaged in a lot of play during the one-on-one intros, especially with the other boys. These were positive interactions, but not a guarantee that he would fit in once part of the larger group. While all signs so far have pointed towards George’s integration being a success, we have been waiting for the day that he would feel comfortable enough to engage in some roughhousing in the larger group setting. This would be an indication that he felt comfortable and secure with his new family. And today, just two weeks after building up the full group, we got to see George play with his new best friend—and an awkward third wheel.

I have to say, we’re excited for George, but we might be even more excited for Gordo. He’s enjoying this new friendship and really deserves a buddy like George.