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Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

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positive reinforcement

Bless this Mess

December 10, 2021 by J.B.

Knowing what you should do and doing what you should do are two very different things.

When a chimpanzees refuses to cooperate with the daily routine, you should take the opportunity to problem solve. Why do they refuse to shift? Are they anxious about being confined to certain areas with other chimps? Is there something about the space they won’t leave that is particularly appealing to them? Or are they simply looking to exert control over their environment? Then you use your hypotheses to create a plan. For example, you could desensitize them to whatever is causing their anxiety through positive reinforcement, make the other areas more appealing to them, or find other more fruitful ways for them to exercise their autonomy.

What you shouldn’t do is catch them off guard and close them out when they least expect it. But like I said, knowing and doing are two very different things! This is why I like teaching – the students never have to know that you can’t even follow your own advice.

Our latest example of what not to do involves Honey B. Honey B has decided that the Mezzanine does not need to be cleaned. We beg to differ, as do our licensing and accrediting agencies, one would assume. So each morning after breakfast, when the playrooms and greenhouses have been cleaned, we ask her to leave the Mezzanine so we can wash it down. And each morning she politely declines.

Honey B, age 32. Likes obstinance and filth.

Now, one day without cleaning is not that big a deal. It’s not routine but it happens. But after two days we have a problem. And this morning, Honey B was looking to throw another wrench in the works. After several minutes of pleading with her, I gave up and accepted defeat. Honey B would get to keep her Mezzanine – and its mess – yet again.

Later in the afternoon, I walked through the greenhouse hallway and was greeted by Honey B. It occurred to me that I just walked by Mave and Willy B in the playroom. THE MEZZANINE WAS EMPTY. We didn’t have much time.

I grabbed my radio.“J.B. to Anna…No one is in the Mezzanine now if you and Kelsi want to close the door!”

Oh, you’d like to close this door?”

Upon hearing the sound of the hydraulics, Honey B headed towards the Mezzanine but the door was already closed. Feeling guilty, we gave her and the gang some gum and jumped into cleaning like a NASCAR pit crew. Pick up! Rinse! Scrub! Rinse! Squeegee! Put out fresh blankets and enrichment!

As the locks clicked shut we did our final security checks and we were ready to let her back in. I knew that she’d be so relieved to be back in her favorite space.

I opened the door and she…just stayed in the playroom.

Nah, I’m good.

Well, at least we have more data for our problem-solving sessions, once we finally get around to doing the right thing. And maybe a new hypothesis: She just likes the mess?

******

If you’d like to help Honey B create more messes and help us continue to clean them up, please check out our wish list full of enrichment and supplies!

Filed Under: Honey B Tagged With: chimpanzee, northwest, positive reinforcement, rescue, Sanctuary

The Bud Box

November 22, 2020 by Anthony

Primates and Bovines

Most of our staff were, at one point or another, either primatology students at nearby Central Washington University (CWU) or interns at the university’s Chimpanzee and Human Communication Institute. People are often surprised to learn that CWU students can specialize in primate behavior at the undergraduate, graduate, or professional certificate level. It’s quite the niche.

We sometimes joke about our research-oriented backgrounds whenever we catch ourselves doing strange tasks around the Chimp House (like fishing stray troll dolls out of the septic tank filter, perusing Amazon for Jamie’s next favorite picture book, or shoveling chimp-size paths through the snow on Young’s Hill). Irony aside, the people who use their Primate Behavior degrees exclusively for studying primate behavior are the true anomalies. The skills developed while studying primatology are widely applicable to a variety of different career paths, and most of us end up doing things we never even dreamed of when we were students.

This point was reiterated when I remotely interviewed for a caregiver position at CSNW. One of the topics that came up was that of cattle care, which is quite different from the other Chimp House duties and may have turned off some candidates. When J.B. asked if I had any familiarity with bovines, I responded that “I have never cared for cattle.” The phone went awkwardly silent for a second, and I quickly realized my strange wording suggested I didn’t like cows. Of course, I actually meant that I had literally never worked with them before, and I tried my best to convey that I was in no way prejudiced against cattle. In fact, I knew little about bovine health or behavior but was super stoked to learn.

Shifting For Safety

In some respects, taking care of chimpanzees is vastly different from managing domesticated animals such as cattle. Sometimes, though, the overlap is considerable. From my perspective, one similarity shared by all species is the tendency to not go where you want them to, making their care more difficult.

We’ve recently discussed the challenges of shifting chimps around the building so that we can safely unlock areas for cleaning. In some cases, such as Willy B’s epic filibusters in the Courtyard and the chute, we can make alternate plans that align with the chimps’ preferences. However, we don’t always have that luxury. On rare occasions, we encounter situations when we need the chimpanzees to leave an area for their immediate safety. These improbable events may be related to extreme weather, enclosure maintenance, or dangerous wildlife. In these critical moments, confused chimpanzees tend to pay less attention to their caregivers and are less likely to cooperate.

One example is that of Burrito’s rattlesnake encounter in Young’s Hill back in September. On that day, the chimps voluntarily came inside, letting us administer antivenom to Burrito and remove the snake from the habitat. In the weeks after, we prioritized recall training. To execute a recall, we invite the the chimps to return to the building, letting us close the doors in exchange for high-value treats. In a couple of cases, this proactive cooperation helped us to humanely relocate non-venomous snakes that had mistakenly found their way into the chimps’ outdoor enclosure. Once the warm weather returns in the spring, we will surely resume this training.

Note: We are frequently asked whether we intervene in fights by splitting the chimpanzees up. We usually do not. Separating a frenzied group of chimps during an altercation is extremely difficult since they are so focused on each other during these moments. They almost always resolve the conflict and reconcile without our assistance.

Other institutions do similar activities for the sake of their chimpanzee residents. At the closed Wildlife Waystation (from whence came Honey B, Mave and Willy B), caregivers are currently teaching the chimps to willingly shift into transport cages in case nearby wildfires threaten the facility again. This ongoing effort recently garnered some well-deserved media attention. As the sanctuary community works to re-home the remaining chimps, it’s good to know that their immediate wellbeing is still a top priority. When those chimpanzees make their way to accredited facilities like ours, hopefully they’ll be like Honey B and bring their cooperative attitudes with them.

The Bud Box

Of course, the chimpanzees aren’t the only CSNW residents who need this kind of training. The sanctuary’s four cattle are also managed using positive reinforcement, and training them to voluntarily enter a smaller corral is one of our top priorities. Plausible scenarios in which we would need to confine the cattle would be to address individual health concerns, to make repairs to the pasture fences, or to evacuate the herd due to a nearby wildfire. We also use a similar process to isolate them for their annual hoof trims and vaccinations. In all of these cases, the first step is to get them out of the larger pasture and into a smaller corral. From there, we herd them into an even smaller pen and then into a narrow chute that allows for safe handling. Cattle are naturally skeptical of anything that seems different (and for good reason), so anything we can do to familiarize them with this process has a positive effect on their welfare.

The key to all this is the Bud Box. Although it sounds like a monthly subscription service for cannabis enthusiasts, the Bud Box is actually a type of cattle pen named after its late inventor, Bud Williams. Bud’s design was (and remains) quite simple: a rectangular enclosure that has one or more outflows located near the main entry gate. Cattle will often turn back once they encounter a dead end, at which point they easily divert into a narrow chute for veterinary care or transport. This relatively cheap design is wildly effective and popular. J.B. built our sanctuary’s Bud Box shortly after the cattle arrived, and it’s already proving to be worth all of his hard work.

Source: Michelle Proctor, University of Missouri

As the above diagram shows, the Bud Box is designed to keep the cattle “flowing” into the chute without much human participation or promise of reward; their aversion to containment drives them through. Ideally, all the human operator has to do is close one gate and open another. Still, it can work better if the animals are familiar with the pen and relatively relaxed. Training is one way to achieve this.

Erin and I have been doing some Bud Box training recently. During these sessions, we put some of the bovines’ regular hay into the box and then briefly close them inside. Then, we open the side gate so they exit through the corresponding chute, receiving the rest of their hay as a reward. Afterwards, we leave the swing gate wide open so that they can re-enter the Bud Box for any leftovers. The following photos show a step-by-step record of the entire process (in case you want to try it with your beloved Jersey cattle at home).

1. With the swing gate open and the chute gate closed, we place an alfalfa/grass hay mixture into the Bud Box and call the cattle over.
2. The cattle come into the corral voluntarily and slowly walk toward the Bud Box. We close the pasture gates behind them.
3. Honey is the bravest. She takes a good sniff of the Bud Box before entering.
4. Honey settles and begins to forage.
5. More skeptical individuals tend to hang back. Meredith need a moment to observe her mother eating safely.
6. The number of cattle in the Bud Box suddenly doubles as Meredith joins Honey inside.
7. Betsy comes over, too.
8. Betsy begins to eat. Nutmeg is the last one to arrive.
9. Nutmeg needs to lick things.
10. With the cattle happily filling their bellies, I close the swing gate behind them.
11. Nom nom nom nom nom
12. Once they’ve eaten a bit, I open the side gate so they can exit via the chute.

13. Although they eagerly leave the Bud Box, they soon decide to go back to it and scarf down the remaining hay.

Our plan is to continue this training on a weekly basis until the cattle calmly enter the Bud Box and exit via the chute with only a tiny bit of coaxing. It may seem like a lot of work now, especially for a bunch of primatology nerds like us, but this training could prove invaluable if we ever have to round up the cattle in a hurry.

In the meantime, I think we all need to appreciate how awesome Nutmeg’s hairstyle is. This anatomical feature is actually an occipital protrusion called a poll, but I think it looks more like a messy man-bun. Either way, he rocks it.

Filed Under: Cattle, Farmed Animals, News, Training, Weather Tagged With: animal behavior, animal rights, animal training, Animal Welfare, animals, bovines, bud box, cattle, chimpanzees, cows, emergency management, jersey cows, livestock, positive reinforcement, ranching

Training Fun

May 29, 2020 by J.B.

Getting chimpanzees to participate in their own medical care is incredibly important for their physical and psychological health. But some chimps, like Foxie, are reluctant to take part. After three decades in laboratories, who could blame her? But with patience, and lots of positive reinforcement, the chimps do learn to trust us. Sometimes, you just have to bend the rules and have a little fun.

Willy B spent some quality time in the courtyard today. I watched as he walked about eight feet across the grass to retrieve a cherry from the ground. He used a small plastic chair almost like a walker so that he had a grip on something familiar. Once he was safely back on the boardwalk, he pant-hooted and then climbed back up to the platform to relax. He even laid down in the shade out there for a while. He’s getting to the point where he only goes back inside for lunch…what a difference a month makes.

And guess who reached out to grab some cabbage from the boardwalk? This is how Willy B started – we’ll see if Mave follows the same course.

Filed Under: Courtyard, Foxie, Latest Videos, Missy, Veterinary Care, Willy B Tagged With: chimpanzee, Foxie, Mave, Missy, northwest, outdoors, positive reinforcement, prt, rescue, Sanctuary, training, veterinary care, Willy B

Cooperative Feeding

January 24, 2020 by J.B.

Willy B is a thief.

Bear in mind, it’s a very minor blemish on his otherwise flawless character. And he’s certainly not the first chimpanzee in history to steal. But it is a problem.

At each meal, Willy B takes what is his and then helps himself to everyone else’s. You can get away with that when you are 175 pounds of muscle. But Honey B and Mave need to eat, too, and none of us need all that drama. While we could isolate Willy B in a separate room during meals, that could lead to pent up frustration and it would certainly be logistically challenging at times. This is where positive reinforcement training comes in.

For many years, we’ve used positive reinforcement training to encourage the chimps to cooperate with medical procedures. Those same techniques apply to husbandry challenges as well. The other day, Anthony built a moveable “target” just for Willy B. After being trained to orient towards and touch the target, Willy B is now learning to remain wherever the target is placed, a behavior known as stationing. Stationing allows us to create some distance between the chimps while they eat. At the same time, he’ll learn that he will be amply rewarded if he remains at his station the entire time and allows the girls to receive their food. Taken together, this is known as cooperative feeding. Mr. Dominant Chimp gets the special privileges he deserves and no one goes hungry. Everyone wins.

This is something I have come to love about working with chimpanzees. You can’t force them to do much of anything, so you are required to demonstrate a little patience and humility. I often visualize it as a choice between trying in vain to dam up a stream and slowly and methodically carving out a new path for the water to flow in a more favorable direction. One day I hope to put this lesson into practice in other areas of my life but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

On a side note, there may be a reason why Willy B was so quick to learn to station. On the other side of the Frisbee there is a pattern with a reflective surface in which he can catch glimpses of his own beautiful face.

Now we may need to train him to look away from his own reflection long enough to eat.

 

Filed Under: Willy B Tagged With: chimpanzee, northwest, operant conditioning, positive reinforcement, prt, rescue, Sanctuary, training, Willy B

Building trust

October 27, 2017 by J.B.

Providing medical care to chimpanzees is always a challenge, but it can be particularly difficult when they have been subject to decades of invasive medical research procedures against their will.

Years ago, we participated in a study that considered whether chimpanzees might exhibit abnormal behaviors that cluster into syndromes similar to posttraumatic stress disorder and depression in humans (you can read it here). Negra was featured in the paper as a case vignette:

A chimpanzee named Negra was a 36-year-old female at the time of the study. Taken from the wild in Africa as an infant, she has remained in captivity since that time. She was used in invasive research, including hepatitis experiments, and for breeding. Each of her infants was removed from her at an early age. During the period in which she was used in research, she was kept in isolation for several years. Approximately 1 year prior to the study, she was transferred to Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest in Washington state, where she currently lives with six other chimpanzees.

Negra met alternative criteria for depression and PTSD. According to reports, she had persistent depressed hunched posture, and she was socially withdrawn. Negra slept excessively during the daytime, and she lacked interest in play, food, other individuals, and grooming. She also demonstrated poor attention to tasks. She was described as slow and sluggish, and at times, she appeared anxious. In response to an unexpected touch, she would “threat bark,” scream, or run away. Compared with other chimpanzees, she demonstrated less variability in her facial expressions. Caretakers reported that her face was expressionless, “like a ghost,” for at least a month after she arrived at the sanctuary. She seldom, if ever, exhibited a play face. She was tested for a thyroid disorder and assessed for other medical causes of her clinical presentation, but all laboratory tests were within normal limits. Based on later reports provided by her caretakers, some of her symptoms have improved since she has been living in the sanctuary. She has become more interested in other chimpanzees, including grooming, and the variability in her facial expressions has increased.

Negra’s anxious response to being touched was not just a sad reminder of her earlier trauma; it was a serious impediment to her care at the sanctuary. Chimpanzees routinely receive wounds from fights, they develop dental problems, they get heart disease and diabetes and many other illnesses, and these things often require medical intervention.

There’s always a way to force medical care on an uncooperative chimpanzee, and sadly that is what’s required from time to time. But that can be stressful and even dangerous. They deserve a chance to participate willingly. Giving them that choice, however, requires a lot of time and energy on the part of their caregivers.

For years, CSNW caregivers (first Debbie and now Anna) have been working with Negra to habituate her to basic medical evaluations and treatments as part of our positive reinforcement training program. These efforts have paid off many times over, most recently when Negra received a wound to her back during a fight. Negra let Anna spray the injury with antiseptic solution and she allowed Dr. Erin to follow that up with laser therapy. In cases where antibiotics may be needed, Negra will even let her caregivers swab the wound to culture the infection and determine the best course of treatment.

For some chimpanzees, this kind of cooperation is no big deal. But chimpanzees are individuals – they have unique life experiences and they cope with those experiences in different ways. Negra has never given her trust lightly. It had to be earned through years of persistent efforts on the part of her caregivers.

It has certainly been worth it.

Filed Under: Caregivers, Negra, Veterinary Care Tagged With: care, chimpanzee, injury, laser, northwest, positive reinforcement, prt, rescue, Sanctuary, therapy, training, trust, vet, veterinary, wound

Positive Reinforcement Progress

November 13, 2015 by J.B.

It’s been seven months since we started our Positive Reinforcement Training program. In that time, both the chimps and the staff have learned a lot.

We, the staff, have learned that training is a difficult skill to develop. As we try to teach new behaviors to the chimps, we are often just as confused and frustrated as they are, if not more so. It takes a lot of patience, creativity, and most importantly, experience, to become a good trainer.

The chimps have learned dozens of behaviors that will make their lives healthier and happier, and they’re starting to discover that cooperating with physical exams and other medical procedures doesn’t have to be scary – it can even be fun.

For his part, Burrito still thinks this whole thing is too good to be true – getting praised and rewarded with food, just for showing us his teeth? He would have done that for free…

But Burrito is not the only one making progress – stay tuned for updates on Annie, Foxie, Jamie, Jody, Missy, and Negra in the coming months.

Filed Under: Burrito, Intelligence, Thanks, Veterinary Care Tagged With: Burrito, chimpanzee, national anti-vivisection society, navs, northwest, operant conditioning, positive reinforcement, prt, rescue, reward, Sanctuary, training

Positive Reinforcement Training

May 1, 2015 by J.B.

We’re really excited to be embarking on a new program here at Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest. Thanks to a generous grant from the National Anti-Vivisection Society Sanctuary Fund, we recently began a Positive Reinforcement Training (PRT) program with the goal of teaching the chimps to participate in cooperative health monitoring.

Many of you reading this are probably familiar with PRT – it’s the “clicker training” that you see used everywhere from teaching dolphins to do flips to teaching your own dog to come when called. It uses positive rewards (usually food) and a “bridge” (a clicker, whistle, or even the word “good”) to reinforce particular behaviors. PRT is a tool, and like most tools, it can be used for good and for bad. So while it may unfortunately be used to teach animals to perform tricks for people’s amusement, it can also have a positive effect on the welfare of chimpanzees in captivity.

In their many decades in different laboratories across the country, the Cle Elum Seven chimps were darted with chemical anesthetics so that the labs could carry out experiments, treat wounds and illnesses, and perform routine physical exams. In some cases, the chimps were forced into small cages and surrounded by technicians with syringes, each one waiting until the chimp moved close enough to the caging to jab them. It’s hard to imagine how terrifying that must have been. And it happened over and over again – for some, well over a hundred times.

Thankfully, life in the laboratory is behind them now, but sanctuaries also have to collect information on the chimpanzees’ health if we want to provide the best care possible. What if there was a way to gain the same information without anesthetizing them at all? And if they did require anesthetization, what if they could learn to willingly participate in the procedure and avoid the pain and trauma of being darted? That’s where PRT comes in.

PRT has been used successfully in zoos, labs, and sanctuaries to teach chimps to cooperate with a host of health monitoring procedures: presenting different body parts for examination, sitting on a scale to be weighed, urinating into a cup, allowing their temperature to be taken, presenting an arm or leg for injection, and even allowing their blood to be drawn.

For us, the real prize is to get a look at Burrito’s heart function using an ultrasound machine. A few years ago, Burrito started showing symptoms of congestive heart failure, and since then we have successfully treated his symptoms with medication. But we’d like to get an echocardiogram to confirm the diagnosis and monitor the disease’s progression, and we’d like it even more if we could avoid anesthetizing him for it.

The grant from NAVS allowed us to bring in Gail Laule from Active Environments for the first of many visits to help create our PRT program and train our staff. Our work with the chimps began last Tuesday, and it’s amazing how much progress the chimps have made in just a little over a week. We began with simple things, like touching a target (just a pvc tube with some tape on the end), and quickly moved on from there.

web_PRT_staff_training_GH_jb_IMG_6814

web_Elizabeth_Burrito_PRT_target_GH_jb_IMG_6825

web_Foxie_touch_PRT_Target_GH_jb_IMG_6831

There are some challenges, of course. Jamie likes to be in control, and this new program has got her quite confused about who exactly is in charge here. So for now, the bulk of Jamie’s training consists of teaching her to allow us to work with the other chimps without interference. Negra, who suffered so much in her 35 years in the lab, was scared of the sound of the clicker, so she needed to be eased into training with more sensitivity. But while that first day was a bit of a challenge for Negra and her caregivers, imagine how she would feel if we had to dart her someday when she became ill. The beauty of PRT is that you can slowly and safely desensitize the chimps to frightening interventions so that when they are really needed, they can be performed with less stress and trauma.

But there is one chimp in particular that seems to enjoy training even more than the others, and who seems to have a particular aptitude for it. Any guesses?

web Burrito outside OA greenhouse eat wrap dinner_MG_6122

That’s right, Burrito has finally found something that combines his two greatest passions: eating and playing with his caregivers. He is going to ace this program.

All of the chimps are learning to touch a target and to present different body parts for inspection – this is how we might examine and treat wounds, for example, and it also creates the foundation for more complex behaviors. To perform his ultrasound, Burrito will have to hold his chest to the caging for an extended period of time, so our training with him is also focusing heavily on that. Here’s a quick clip to show you how well our star student is doing:

We are so grateful to NAVS for providing the funding for this training, to Gail for getting us off on the right foot, and to all of our supporters who make each day in sanctuary possible for these seven chimps. We are looking forward to sharing our progress with you!

Filed Under: Burrito, Caregivers, Chimpanzee Behavior, Food, Sanctuary, Thanks Tagged With: active environments, Burrito, chimpanzee, health, medical, northwest, positive reinforcement, prt, rescue, Sanctuary, training, veterinary

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