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portrait

Let’s groom!

August 30, 2024 by Jenna

Grooming is an important part of being a chimpanzee. Chimpanzees spend a majority of their day grooming, either themselves or each other. Not only does it help one be clean of dead skin, dirt, plants, debris, bugs, etc., it also helps build and maintain friendships and social relationships.

As we have discussed many times before, Willy B is an awkward chimpanzee. It seems like he doesn’t know what to do in many situations. However, one thing he has down is grooming. He grooms with the boys in his group the most, but can often be seen grooming with Rayne or Mave. Check out today’s video to see Willy B focused on grooming his group members! I threw in some footage of a current funny mystery we have going in the chimp house, as well. I’m curious as to who you think is the culprit.

Photos from today:

Cy grooming Volunteer Lizz

Cy portraits. Are you kidding me?! Look at this guy!

Gordo piloerect:

Gordo not piloerect:

Filed Under: Caregivers, Chimpanzee, Chimpanzee Behavior, Cy, Foxie, Gordo, Grooming, Volunteers Tagged With: Cy, Gordo, Grooming, lizz, pilo, piloerect, portrait, volunteer

Postponing Winter

October 27, 2023 by Jenna

Despite the sudden cooler temperatures (it was a crisp 33 degrees arriving to the sanctuary this morning), the sun was out and shining today. The sun felt so good and warm, that I thought it’d be a perfect day for a forage on Young’s Hill. Jamie, Missy, Burrito, Annie, and Foxie agreed with me and were happy to do a lunch forage out on the Hill. Negra requested her meal to be inside for a lunch party of one, presumably so she can be where it is warmer.

One of the highlights of the morning, as you will see pictured below, is Jamie drinking from her tiny teacup. We made up a Gatorade pool, which is one of Jamie’s favorite things, in their Playroom. The entire group usually sits down and drinks up. Jamie loves using a cup to drink from, but today it was especially funny to see her use the tiniest cup possible to drink from.

On the other side of the building, Cy’s group is also soaking up the sun in their Greenhouses, their chute, and the Bray.

Rayne:

Cy:

Annie:

Burrito:

Jamie:

Missy:

Rayne:

Drawing on a package we received from a donor 🙂

Filed Under: Annie, Burrito, Cy, Jamie, Missy, Rayne, Young's Hill Tagged With: bamboo, Burrito, Cy, foraging, Jamie, portrait, Rayne, stick, young's hill

Why Them?

February 19, 2022 by Diana

There’s an image from the news last month that I can’t get out of my mind. I’m betting many of you saw it too. It was a photograph, shared in this New York Times article, among many other publications, of wooden crates strewn across a highway, some of them upright, some of them on their sides. There are stickers on the crates that say “Live Animals” and “Do Not Tip”.

We know from the reporting that these crates held cynomolgus macaques, often referred to as “cynos” by caretakers in biomedical laboratories, and commonly called both crab-eating and long-tailed macaques. We know that there were around 100 monkeys on the truck that crashed in Pennsylvania and that they were being transported from John F. Kennedy airport to an undisclosed biomedical facility. The main headline was that several of the monkeys “escaped” when the truck crashed, and that the public was asked to stay away from the area and avoid contact with the monkeys.

We also know that these macaques were shipped from Mauritius to JFK. Mauritius is a small island country in the Indian Ocean, off the eastern coast of Africa, 500 miles east of Madagascar. From my brief background searching, I found that Mauritius is a beautiful island with an interesting political and economic history that has resulted in a diverse religious and ethnic population, with many of the human residents decedents of indentured servants used to farm sugar plantations. Like a lot of the world, it was under the control of different European nations over the years and is now independently governed.

Macaques are not native to the island. They were thought to have been brought there in the 1600s by sailors. Wild populations of these macaques now thrive on the island and are considered to be an invasive species. Starting a few decades ago, wild macaques were captured and captive-breeding programs began specifically to export their offspring to biomedical laboratories primarily in the United States and the U.K. Mauritius supplies as many as 10,000 cynomolgus macaques per year to U.S. laboratories.

More recently, and controversially, laboratories are being developed on the island to do research there rather than only relying on the export of the monkeys to labs in other countries. If you type “Mauritius monkeys” into any search engine, you will find a lot of information about the monkey trade there and the animal activism that has resulted from that trade.

It’s still difficult for me to cognitively comprehend the scale of biomedical research using non-human primates. It is estimated that there are around 75,000 monkeys used each year in biomedical research, including breeding programs and holding facilities, in the United States alone.

Even those of us who know a little bit about biomedical research on monkeys are rarely confronted with the reality of all of this primate research. The crates that were tossed from the transport truck during the accident and the monkeys who got out of their crates to briefly roam Pennsylvania, I imagine in a terrified mental state, were a tiny reminder of all the individual lives that are sacrificed for biomedical testing.

Of course the news cycle is quick, and I doubt many people who read the original headlines are still thinking about those monkeys or the tens of thousands of their kind they represent.

You might be wondering at this point what happened to the escapees. Some of the stories I saw just mentioned that they were “accounted for” within a few days, though the Associated Press expanded upon that and said that three were “euthanized” once they were found. Further reporting specified that the macaques were shot with firearms.

The airline that initially shipped the monkeys, Kenya Airways, has since publicly stated that they are ending their contract with the undisclosed company that had the monkeys shipped to the U.S. Perhaps the CEO of Kenya Airways, like me, can’t get that image of those crates in the highway out of his mind.

We at Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest have plans for the future that include building and caring for monkeys, perhaps monkeys that are now part of biomedical research. It’s very unlikely that the sanctuary community will ever be large enough or have the funds to retire all monkeys from biomedical testing, and there are currently no restrictions on “euthanizing” non-chimpanzee primates for purely management or financial reasons (chimpanzees hold a unique place in the biomedical research field for this practice of not being killed when they are no longer useful).

I often think about the chimpanzees who lived their entire lives in laboratories. The ones who were part of the system long before sanctuaries existed, and the ones who are still part of the system because they have been deemed ineligible for retirement.

There’s no just reason for particular chimpanzees to have been given the opportunity of a different kind of life in a sanctuary while others were not, and the same will hold true for monkeys.

Here’s the tiny bit of hope, though:

We will keep working for those chimpanzees still in laboratories. We will continue to try to give the chimpanzees in our care a true sanctuary life. We will continue to share their beautiful faces and personalities with you, like these photos I took today of brother and sister Cy and Lucky:

Cy
Lucky

And you will continue to remind others that their lives are important.

There are some monkeys that are being retired from biomedical testing to other sanctuaries now. One day we will join them in providing a home for monkeys. It won’t be all the monkeys who deserve retirement, but for those who come here, we will give them a true sanctuary life and we will share their beautiful faces and personalities with you. Because their lives are important too.

Some day in the future, I can’t even begin to imagine when, but some day, there will be a celebration for the last monkeys in biomedical research in the U.S. going to their sanctuary home.

Filed Under: Chimpanzees in Biomedical Research, Cy, Lucky, Sanctuary Tagged With: biomedical research, biomedical testing, chimp, chimpanzee, chimps, cynomolgus macaques, escaped monkey, hope, macaque, mauritius, monkey retirement, photo, portrait, Primates

Portraits of Negra

December 17, 2021 by J.B.

Just a few shots of Negra as she waited for breakfast this morning:

Filed Under: Negra Tagged With: chimpanzee, Negra, northwest, portrait, rescue, Sanctuary

Portrait of a Pant Hoot

December 11, 2021 by Diana

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:

Filed Under: Chimpanzee Behavior, Dora, Sanctuary, Weather Tagged With: ape, chimpanzee, chimpanzee portrait, Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest, chimps, chimpsnw, dora, pant hoot, photo, portrait, vocalization

The Nifty Fifty

November 29, 2021 by Anthony

I’m sure all of you are familiar with the Lucky Six by now, but do you know the Nifty Fifty?

Before I get any further ahead, I need to clarify something. Y’all may be disappointed, but we don’t currently have any plans to rescue a group of fifty chimpanzees. (Not anytime soon, at least.) The colloquial term “Nifty Fifty” refers to something a little less exciting.

The Nifty Fifty is a type of camera lens.

More specifically, photographers refer to 50mm prime (fixed) lenses as “nifty fifties” because they’re relatively inexpensive, versatile, lightweight and sharp (id est, nifty).

By sacrificing the mechanical components required to zoom in on a subject, prime lenses can be built with a larger aperture* (usually f/1.4 or 1.8) while retaining their relatively affordable price and compact size. This trade-off is particularly beneficial in poorly-lit conditions, but it also creates a shallow depth of field that can produce a bokeh effect (an aesthetically-pleasing background blur that makes the subject stand out). Given all these qualities, the 50mm prime is a staple of event, travel, studio, and street photographers. It’s not bad for shooting landscapes, either!

*For those of you who may be new to this topic, aperture, shutter speed, and ISO/sensitivity are the three main variables that photographers adjust to get the desired exposure. The aperture setting is the camera’s equivalent to the dilation of your eye’s pupil; when the aperture is opened wide, more light reaches the sensor at any given shutter speed or sensitivity, resulting in a brighter image.

Normally, the first lenses we caregivers reach for in the morning are the heavier telephotos that let us zoom in on the chimpanzees from afar. These lenses are particularly useful when the chimps are lounging on the upper decks of the greenhouse enclosures or foraging outside in Young’s Hill. They’re not quite as effective indoors, however, since they have comparatively small apertures that limit the passage of light to the sensor.

Last week, the weather was foggy, chilly and wet, and the sanctuary’s primate residents chose to spend more time lounging and socializing in the heated indoor areas. With the chimps hanging out in close proximity and limited sunlight coming in through the windows and overhead skylights, I decided to use the 50mm “nifty fifty” lens to get some portraits for the blog. Fortunately, some of the chimps let me photograph them while they perused their daily enrichment and made blanket nests in the cozy front rooms.

Cy
Dora
Gordo
Honey B
Rayne
Gordo
Dora

When we’re holding the camera lens (or smartphone) flush against the caging, it’s easy to forget that there’s steel mesh between us. For some perspective on this, I recommend revisiting one of Diana’s posts from long ago: Caging is OK.

Caregiver/Vet Assistant Sofia and Terry

Safely shooting through the caging is one of the most difficult aspects of photographing chimps. One benefit of the wide aperture on the aforementioned Nifty Fifty is that it can blur out a barrier even when sections of it are obstructing the image. Sometimes, this effect even creates a halo-like frame around a chimpanzee’s face. In my opinion, it’s a cool way of highlighting each chimps’ unique expressions while subtly reminding you that the barriers are there. In these photos of Jody and Annie, you can see the caging but it’s not drawing your attention like it would if it was sharply in focus.

Jody
Annie

One slow afternoon, I sat with half-sisters Lucky and Rayne for a few minutes and let them each observe their reflections in the camera lens. They were both enthralled by the shiny iridescence of the optical pieces, the bizarre motion of my fingertips around the camera’s other controls, and the absurd positions I put myself in to get the compositions I wanted. Their inquisitive stares led to some striking “eye contact” with the lens, and I was pleased with how each series captured pieces of their quirky personalities.

Lucky was the first to approach and spent the whole session looking down at me with skepticism. Typical.

Rayne was munching on a paper wadge when we started, but she eventually spit it out so she could examine her own teeth in the reflection.

Finally, here are a couple more shots I took with the 50mm this past week. Thanks for scrolling down this far!

Honey
The Hay Barn
Meredith
The view looking northwest towards Cle Elum
Nutmeg
Barn Kitty

 

 

Filed Under: Art, Caregivers, Cattle, Enrichment, Lucky, Rayne, Sanctuary Tagged With: animal rights, Animal Welfare, chimp, chimp enrichment, chimpanzee, chimpanzee sanctuary, Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest, chimpanzees, csnw, photography, portrait, portrait photography, portraits, Sanctuary

Chimpanzee Paparazzi

October 30, 2021 by Diana

The next time a stranger asks me what I do, I think I will answer that I’m part of a paparazzi team for some high-profile niche celebrities, focusing on positive images and stories.

The camera was clicking away when I was taking these photos of Queen Negra today:

Co-paparazzi J.B. captured this image of the devilishly handsome Willy B while he was in the Courtyard.

Filed Under: Courtyard, Negra, Sanctuary, Willy B, Young's Hill Tagged With: animal protection, animal rescue, animal rights, Animal Welfare, chimp sanctuary, chimpanzee rescue, chimpanzee retirement, chimpanzee sanctuary, Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest, chimpanzees, photo, portrait, Sanctuary

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