Just like humans, chimpanzees have a variety of decibels in which they vocalize, though when they are loud, they are LOUD.
pant hoot
Portrait of a Pant Hoot
The day started out on the warm side, considering that we are well into the month of December. The chimps’ greenhouse spaces were cozy all morning.
A storm came through in the afternoon, making the most delightful sound as the droplets hit the greenhouse roof panels.
Just as the rain began, Dora went into her greenhouse, looking up towards the sound:
glancing at me:
and then beginning a glorious chimpanzee response to the rain – a classic pant-hoot (for a classic video of pant-hoots, go here):
Her display was short-lived. She calmly retreated to a windowsill:
A VERY Special Message
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:
CHIMPANZEE CHAMPIONS:
Marya Barey
Pam Lehnert & Marc Warner
Krissy Brasfield of
Never too old to play
If Burrito and Negra in today’s video do not put a smile on your face and a desire in your heart to help support them and the sanctuary, well I just don’t know what will.
HOOT! is coming up fast! I’ll be spending the next few days madly uploading more auction items – there are some really fun and beautiful things to bid on, and there are a lot of reasons to give. Hope for the future!
P.S. I’m still waiting on your pant-hoot submissions – don’t forget!
Pant-Hoot Tutorial for Virtual HOOT! 2020
If you received our e-newsletter last week, the phrase “pant-hoot tutorial” might be something you recognize as one of the survey questions asked to get a sense of how you want to participate in the Virtual HOOT! gala event. If you didn’t receive the e-news, you can sign up on our home page or on this page – just scroll down to the brown block where it says “subscribe to newsletter”.
While 50% of respondents replied that they would not participate in a pant-hoot contest, there seemed to me to be enough interest to force, I mean, encourage, J.B. to film himself pant-hooting (see video above).
We would really love your submissions – it would be super fun to show the videos to the chimps for their reactions. Maybe they should be the judges! You can check out what the winner will receive and the details for easy submission on the Pant-Hoot Contest page of Virtual HOOT! 2020.
Another interesting finding from the survey so far is 60% of respondents voted that we should set our fundraising goal for the virtual event at the same amount we had for the in-person gala, which was $200,000. I love that enthusiasm, and I hope we can get close to that amount! Our auction committee decided to be a bit more cautious, though still incredibly hopeful, with a goal of $150,000. That would go a long way towards funding care for the year and could even add to our expansion funds so we can continue building the greenhouses into the winter.
We’re just starting to add auction items, and we have a lot more things in store, so keep going back to the site to check out what’s new in the coming days!
The date of the actual virtual event is September 12th and is free for anyone to watch and participate. Bidding on auction items is also open to anyone and begins September 2nd.
We are going to hold a Zoom Happy Hour for a limited number of people who will get to join the chimpanzees live for a drink before the virtual event begins. Registration for the happy hour just opened, so register today!
Okay, stop reading and watch the tutorial a few more times, then send us your best, funniest, or most creative pant-hoot!
Dizzy with Excitement
At Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest, we encourage all of our staff and volunteers to communicate with the chimps in their language as much as possible. This means that we adopt a submissive posture when the chimps are displaying, we cover our top teeth when we smile during play, and we pant hoot with the group when they are excited.
This last one can be difficult, though. Pant hoots, like many other chimp vocalizations such as breathy-pant greetings and laughter, require rapid breathing – as much as 10 to 15 times the normal rate. One minute you’re singing along with the chimps, the next minute you’re passed out on the floor. How do the chimps get away with it?
One interesting theory involves laryngeal air sacs, which are inflatable extensions of the vocal tract in the neck and upper chest of chimps and many other primates. I worked with chimps for a while without even realizing that they had air sacs, and they only came to my attention because they are prone to infection (airsacculitis) and occasionally need to be treated. They’re not noticeable in chimpanzees under normal circumstances like they are in some other species. Interestingly, humans and a few other primates lack them altogether.
So what function do they serve? No one really knows for sure. The most obvious answer would be that they make vocalizations more efficient, possibly by increasing amplitude, matching impedance with the surrounding air, or lowering their frequency so that they travel farther through forest environments. But this doesn’t seem to be true in all species. Alternatively, they may allow smaller primates to sound larger than they are for the purposes of mating or territoriality – much like the way that male dogs attempt to urinate as high on a tree as possible. Whereas dogs tag trees to say WATCH OUT – VERY BIG DOG WAS HERE, perhaps monkeys are saying BEWARE – YOU ARE ENTERING GIANT MONKEY TERRITORY. But again, the evidence is mixed.
Air sacs are thought to be associated with a few species-specific calls such as the siamang’s “ascending boom” and what is perhaps the best named primate vocalization of all time, the gorilla’s “sex whinny”.
My favorite theory – which does not make it true, by any means – is that these air sacs allow certain primates to produce rapid inhale-exhale calls without hyperventilating. The sacs expand during exhalation, which means that they fill with CO2-rich air, and then they collapse during inhalation. What do humans often do when we are hyperventilating? We breath into paper bags to rebreathe our own air and restore CO2 levels (don’t try this at home on my advice, as it appears some more serious conditions can be mistaken for hyperventilation and made worse by rebreathing). Chimps, it turns out, have the equivalent of paper bags built right in.
Air sacs may very well serve different functions in different species, or even multiple functions within the same species. The above theories aren’t mutually exclusive. But it’s clear that humans get along just fine without them – well, humans that don’t work with chimps, that is. Our ancestors most likely possessed them, so why would they disappear? It’s possible that when humans evolved ways to modulate our breathing and produce multiple phrases with each exhale we lost the need for them, and because they are prone to infection, they eventually disappeared.
Which means that we humans have to temper our excitement around the chimp house or else we’ll end up passing out before the party has even started.
The Thanksgiving Celebration
As promised, here is the video of yesterday’s party.
The anticipation of the feast is always the best part. When chimpanzees are happy, they share their happiness with everyone around them. They hug and kiss each other and join together in choruses of pant-hoots. And they share pants and grunts of excitement with their caregivers.
It’s a celebration not just of food, but of the family they have become. And we are grateful to be considered part of their family in moments like these.