Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

Hope. Love. Home. Sanctuary

seattle

Laugh and Shop

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We have a lot of stuff going on to support the Cle Elum Seven – I hope you can join us for these upcoming happenings:

Tuesday, October 7th: If you’re in the Seattle area, come to comedy night this Tuesday! Doors open at 8:00pm, and you can rsvp now using Evite.  You can meet Keith, J.B. and myself. You can laugh up a storm. And you can buy some prints of Jamie’s artwork, as well as cards that have prints of a watercolor of Jody that Margaret painted! If you caught the interview on the radio this morning, you learned all about Yoram Bauman “the stand-up economist” and his Non-Profit Comedy Nights at Seattle’s Comedy Underground. It’s bound to be a lot of fun and it will raise needed funds to help care for the Cle Elum Seven. UPDATE: THIS SHOW IS FOR 21+ ONLY – a new decision by the state liquor board.

Sunday, October 12th: Our first Holiday Shopping event is happening at the Freemont store Urban Weeds. 25% of all purchases on the 12th will go towards CSNW. If you’ve never been to this cool urban gardening store, visit their website then visit the store on the 12th.

Saturday, October 18th: Wild Birds Unlimited in Monroe, WA is donating 10% of their profits for the day. This store is a must-visit for all bird enthusiasts, and a great place to pick up gifts for the backyard birders in your life.

Saturday, October 25th: 20% of sales from the Seattle store Laura Bee Designs will be donated to the sanctuary. Laura Bee has all kinds of unique, stylish and customizable handbags and accessories. A perfect place to pick up unique gifts! Check out Laura Bee’s recent blog post featuring Negra!

PAWSwalk – more fun that a hangar full of dogs

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Keith and I manned and womanned the CSNW booth at PAWSwalk yesterday. I had no idea I was going to have so much fun. Keith has been going for years, but this was my first time. We talked to so many wonderful people and I must have patted hundreds of dogs. The Seattle ‘animal community’ is awesome, and PAWS is an organization to admire. Hopefully there are a few new friends on the blog today that stopped by our booth yesterday. I hope to see you at the walk next year too!

Cle Elum Seven home at last!

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All seven chimpanzees, now to be known as the Cle Elum Seven, are safe in their new sanctuary home! The transfer went incredibly smoothly and the chimpanzees are very calm and clearly happy to be here. Negra, Burrito, Missy, Annie, and Jamie have been taking turns looking out the window (Negra seems to dominate that space). They’ve been playing with each other and eating the fresh fruit that was donated this morning. You might see the chimpanzees on King 5 or Komo 4 tonight if you’re in Seattle or KAPP 35 in Yakima! And the story of their arrival will be showing up in various newspapers too. This photo, though, says it all.

Negra’s first view out of a window

Should chimpanzees wear dresses?

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We received the following question from a donor:  I was looking at your wish list and I have a question: what are the clothes, hats, and shoes for? I assume the other stuff is all for the chimps or facility, but do they dress up in people’s clothes?

Good question!  Those items must seem like very strange requests.  The purpose of giving captive chimpanzees ‘human items’ is to alleviate boredom.  Chimpanzees are extremely intelligent and curious and, of course, are not meant to live in captivity.  In the wild they travel great distances each day, forage and sometimes hunt for food, manufacture and use tools, build nests to sleep in at night, defend their territory from neighboring groups… the list of complicated behaviors goes on and on.  The #1 challenge of caring for captive chimpanzees is figuring out how to keep their minds active – because they can get extremely depressed when they don’t have enough to do.

Because chimpanzees who have been raised in captivity cannot be released into the wild, we must do whatever we can to make their environment complicated and interesting.  Giving them access to human items is a great way to do so.  Most captive chimpanzees have been raised either with or by humans, so objects like shoes and clothing are familiar to them.  Some chimpanzees actually like to put clothing on (probably because they’ve seen humans do it and they are imitating) but most often they will use clothing to build nests.  Free-living chimpanzees create nests in the trees out of branches and leaves and this seems to be an innate behavior because captive chimpanzees do it as well, but with blankets, sheets, clothing… any fabric they have access to, really.  Different types, colors, and sizes of clothing gives them more variety for nest-building.

Of course, it’s important to distinguish between giving chimpanzees access to human items and forcing them to use human items, as we often see in entertainment situations.  People often think it is funny or cute to see chimpanzees wearing clothing, and this is a perspective that we DO NOT take.  But we do believe that we are obligated to give them access to any (safe) items that have been known to alleviate boredom in other captive chimpanzees.

Hello world!

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Welcome to the Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest blog! We’re excited to be blogging and can’t wait to keep everyone updated with the latest and greatest news from the Sanctuary. So stay tuned, once we figure out how to use this thing, we’ll have lots of updates and news to share.