Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

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Cooperative Feeding

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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.

 

A welcome distraction

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I’m happy to report that our patient is doing very well. He’s taking his meds without too much cajoling, leaving his bandage on, and even playing with his caregivers. This last procedure doesn’t seem to have phased him much at all. It may even feel like a relief.

Typically, chimps in recovery require lots of distraction techniques to keep them from removing bandages and picking at their sutures. You can’t just stick a cone on a chimpanzee, so instead we stick random pieces of surgical tape all over their bodies and occasionally add “distraction sutures”, which are shallow absorbable sutures that the chimps can focus on without causing any harm to the actual incision. Overwhelm them with things to pick at and just maybe they won’t pick at the one that matters. At least not right away.

But none of this was necessary, because we woke up to a couple inches of snow this morning and it’s all Burrito can think about. Snow balls. Buckets of snow. Snow drizzled with juice. I don’t remember him being this crazy for snow in winters past, but it is a welcome distraction right now.

Laughter is the (second) best medicine

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Over the last few days, we have been arranging play dates for Burrito.  He still has a stubborn, slow-healing injury on his toe that needs to resolve before he can rejoin the rowdy gang of girls (who are in the midst of a thunderous group display directed at their three neighbors as a write this). But we felt he could safely handle some one-on-one visits, and we knew it would do him a world of good.

Jamie (shown grooming Burrito in this series) and Jody have been tending to both his wounds and his spirits. They’ve groomed his injuries and engaged him in slow games of chase throughout the front rooms. Just minutes ago, Jody and Burrito were gently wrestling and laughing so hard I could hear them from the foyer.

They say that laughter is the best medicine but we’re not going to give up on the antibiotics just yet. Burrito will continue to get late-night yogurt cups, juice, and all other manner of goodies stuffed with meds until that toe heals. But visits from friends sure do help.

Midnight bagels

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Whenever a chimp is in the clinic for a procedure, I can’t wait for it to be over so we can put them back into the recovery room.

Drs. Zamzow and Khachatryan perform surgery on Burrito

But as soon as we get them in the recovery room, I almost wish they were back in the clinic.

Diana repositions Burrito, still under anesthesia, for x-rays in the recovery enclosure

That’s because in the clinic, we have tons of information about their vitals and far more control over the administration of analgesics, antibiotics, and other drugs that are essential for well-being and even survival. Once they’re in recovery, we have to hope for a cooperative patient. And chimpanzees are not known to be very cooperative under even the best of circumstances…

If a chimpanzee has a major surgery or shows difficulty recovering from anesthesia, we will stay with them overnight – sometimes for nights on end. We’ll monitor their respiration, give medications, and in some cases just nudge them to get up in order to promote circulation and deeper breathing. Our recent sleepovers with Burrito were actually pretty quiet, though the other chimps occasionally had something to say about the cornucopia of food available only to Burrito.

During critical recovery periods, caregivers sleep just outside the recovery enclosure to provide 24-hour care.

Some of the behaviors we work on in positive reinforcement training come in handy in times like these. While a no-contact thermometer isn’t very scary to begin with, it helps that Burrito is used to holding his temple to the caging while we get a reading.

A no-contact thermometer is an effective way to record trends in body temperature
In addition to charts for medications and procedures, caregivers maintain a log of vital signs such as temperature and respiratory rate

Administering meds is the most difficult part by far. Anesthesia and medications can make a chimpanzee lose his appetite – even a professional eater like Burrito. And some medications taste and smell disgusting. So whenever a chimp is on medication after a procedure, you will find the counters filled with all sorts of goodies – pudding, applesauce, juice, yogurt, soda, smoothie, bread, bagels, baked goods, jam, honey, syrup, dried fruit…anything that will mask the pill or liquid. And in many cases it only works once, so next time it’s back to the drawing board. But they have to take their meds, so there’s no giving up.

Burrito enjoys a midnight snack (spiked with pain relievers).

We’re so grateful that Burrito’s world-famous appetite is beginning to return and his suspicion of being surreptitiously medicated is starting to wane. In the not-too-distant future, he will be back to his old routine. And while I’m sure he’ll be thrilled to go back, I know he’ll miss those midnight bagels…

Thank you

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We just wanted to take a moment to say how grateful we are for the support you have shown us.

In the chimp sanctuary world, we tend to have two different types of conversations. With our colleagues, we are blunt and direct. We talk about illness, conflict, injury, and death, and the constant challenge of caring for powerful animals with the capacity for intense physical violence. We speak freely about these things because we’ve all experienced them directly and come to terms with them as best we can. With those outside of our profession, however, we are more guarded. Whether it’s to protect the image of chimpanzees or that of our own sanctuaries, we have a tendency to gloss over some of the less cheerful aspects of our work. In a way, it’s only natural to want to share more of the things you are most proud of, but there’s also a constant concern that events will be misinterpreted. And if I’m being honest, it’s a bit calculated as well. We are nonprofits, after all, and we rely on your approval (in the form of donations) to do our work.

Over the years, we’ve tried, with varying degrees of success, to be more honest with our supporters. Sometimes we don’t really have a choice – once you get to know Foxie through our more cheerful blog posts, you are probably going to wonder where her ear went, and that would be a difficult subject to avoid for any length of time. The same is true of Burrito and Honey B’s ordeal, as well as the larger fate of our integration efforts. But we’ve also found our supporters to be both understanding and appreciative of increased transparency, even when the news is uncomfortable or upsetting. And at times like this, you are also a great source of comfort for the staff and volunteers that have worked so hard and worried so long only to have their hearts broken.

Your ultimate concern, I know, is for the chimps, so let me give you a quick update. Burrito is still isolated in Front Room 1. He has been quite groggy, swinging from anesthesia hangover to narcotic haze, but he is making progress and beginning to eat more regularly. The girls spent the first day watching him closely and occasionally spitting on him through the door to try to wake him up. When he finally got up, they greeted him enthusiastically, as you can see in the video above. Every few hours, he heads over to the mesh to be groomed by them. But he will need much more time to heal before he can be with them – their drama is difficult enough to deal with when you are at the top of your game.

Honey B spent a couple days in Front Room 7 in the new wing to recover, with Willy B and Mave on the other side of the mesh. She likes to show us her injuries, even those as small as a paper cut, and she seemed very proud of her own progress. We agreed, so much so that she was reunited with Willy B and Mave this evening.

It’s a challenge to care for chimps, and there’s no way to hide that fact. Thanks again for being there for us during the more difficult moments.