Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

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Video and Image to Share for #GivingTuesday

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If you read this blog, you hopefully also get our e-newsletter, so this video may have landed in your inbox early this morning.

#GivingTuesday is the big kick-off to holiday giving for nonprofits, so we wanted to make sure you didn’t miss out! Please share the video now with your friends via email, Facebook, Twitter, etc!

We’re hoping to get closer to our 50 new sponsor-a-days for 2015 today, so please consider sponsoring a day for yourself or a loved one. It’s a great two-for-one gift: a gift for the chimpanzees and a gift for your honored special someone. What could be sweeter?

Your donation today, whether a sponsor-a-day donation, a chimpanzee pal donation, or a general donation, will receive a special thank you bonus as part of your email confirmation.

Thank you for remembering Annie, Burrito, Foxie, Jamie, Jody, Missy, and Negra in your holiday giving!

Watch and share the #GivingTuesday video below:

And feel free to share this image too!

Give Love

Chimpanzee Pretzel Play

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We have said it before – and I’ll say it again now – no one, whether human or chimpanzee, can bring out the goofiness in Jamie like Foxie can. This video is a must-see if you need a little boost to your day.

And here’s that chimpanzee pretzel photo:

Jamie and Foxie in a Chimpanzee Pretzel

Professional Photographers in the Making

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Back in August, I posted some photos taken by winners of the photography experience at the sanctuary that was a popular item at our HOOT! gala. So popular, that we gave it away twice to the top two bidders. A few weeks ago, the second pair of bidders came to have their experience.

I’m very happy to say that a couple of their photos will be featured in our 2015 calendar! The calendar is done, I’m just (anxiously) awaiting a proof so I can list it for sale in our Zazzle store. If all is well with the proof, you’ll be able to buy the calendar starting Tuesday.

Big big thanks to Dean Rutz and Karen Ducey, the professional photographers who gave their time and lent equipment for this incredible experience!

It was very difficult to choose among the amazing photos, but below are a few of my personal favorites.

 

Jamie taken by Liz:

Jamie standing

Jamie hanging

 

What a shot! Jamie seemingly flying, taken by Connie

Jamie flying

 

Jody with a bountiful breakfast, taken by Connie:

Jody food in mouth

 

This one of Connie’s I also really like because we don’t have many photos of Foxie and Negra together:

Foxie and Negra together

 

And here’s another one by Liz of Negra with “Negra light“:

Negra

 

Thanks Connie and Liz for bidding on the Photography experience and to Karen and Dean for making it happen and giving such great instruction to these professional photographers in the making!

Liz and Connie

 
This might be a good time to mention that we are in need of a hard drive for our chimp house computer. Our automatic back-ups stopped working, which means all of the photos taken in the last couple of weeks haven’t been backed up yet. I added a hard drive to our wishlist if there’s someone out there who would like to help us out! It’s on sale right now through Amazon Prime. Thanks for taking a look!

So Like Themselves

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This morning I was contemplating how we as humans view chimpanzees and how my own views of chimpanzees have changed after getting to know many different personalities. And then I got to the computer and saw these photos that J.B. had taken this morning while strolling with Jamie and Missy.

I know most of you reading this already know how seriously we take safety, but for those who might be reading for the first time, I like to make sure it’s clear that J.B. was safely on the outside of the double electric fence when he took these photos.

No fence, however, prevents us from taking part in the lives of the chimpanzees – Jamie insists on her human caregivers joining in her strolls. And Missy sometimes comes along for the exercise, fun, and companionship too.

Today, Missy got an extra surprise – Jamie’s Halloween / birthday bag that was left at the top of the hill yesterday (see the Jamieween video for reference).

Jamie and Missy walking

Missy and Jamie walking

Missy standing up

Jamie and Missy

Missy looking in bag

After taking a look in the bag, I’m guessing Missy ran down the hill at breakneck speed – not because of what she saw, but because this is what she likes to do. She sometimes joins Jamie in strolling down the perimeter, but Missy’s speed is usually on “fast,” and she really enjoys running down from the very top of the hill, leaving us slower folks in her dust.

Jamie, on the other hand, makes sure that her human walking partner is keeping up:

Jamie looking back

 

Walking around the hill is perhaps Jamie’s greatest pleasure. This is the face of contentment:

Jamie looking awesome

Many people, when first learning about chimpanzees, are in awe of how similar they are to humans. And, in fact, many behavioral researchers have spent years comparing chimpanzees to humans in so many ways – language ability, counting prowess, puzzle-solving, teamwork, etc, etc, etc. I think this is what first interested me in non-human great apes. And it still does. It’s remarkable to see Jamie communicating her desires with her human caregivers using gestures, using a (plastic) screwdriver, drawing with a ball point pen, playing with an iPad, and many other activities that she enjoys. And their similarities don’t end on the individual level – observing the social interactions of chimpanzees often really does resemble watching a human reality show – strong personalities and lots of drama.

But what I like most about chimpanzees now, and I think what more and more people are being drawn towards, is their chimpanzee-ness. It’s true that they are so like us, and we, in turn, are so like them, but what they are even more like is themselves, and that’s what makes them fascinating, wonderful, and deserving of protection.

Greenhouse Napping

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It’s hard to remember, but the space that we now call the greenhouse used to be the chimpanzees’ only outdoor area.

building without Young's Hill

Karen and Don Young visited in 2009, and we conceived the idea of encasing the caging in removable polycarbonate panels so that the chimpanzees could enjoy this space year round! The Youngs kicked off donations for this project and we raised the rest of the greenhouse funds at our 2009 auction.

Construction began in late 2009 and early 2010 (because what better time to embark on a construction project than winter?!). Those were some cold construction days, as Jim Spencer I’m sure still remembers.

greenhouse construction in snow

The result for the chimpanzees was so worth it! The greenhouse is their favorite area year round.

greenhouse in snow

When the weather starts to warm up in the spring, J.B. removes some of the panels, leaving the roof, so the chimpanzees enjoy their summer lounging in an indoor-outdoor space.

web jb removing greenhouse panels view youngs hill

Then, around this time of year (today, for example), J.B. buttons up the greenhouse for the winter, so the chimpanzees can enjoy the cooler months in the protected area that heats up with the rays of the sun, or, in the case of today, keeps out the rain.

Today, Jamie enjoyed nesting and napping up high on the platform today, where it’s warmest, as it poured and blew outside:

Jamie sleeping on platform

Jamie at rest

Jamie close up under blanket

Jamie with eyes closed

And, of course, she also ventured onto Young’s Hill during breaks in the rain.

Jamie standing on Young's Hill

Droopy lip vs heavy lip

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My all time favorite chimpanzee facial expression is the “relaxed face with drooped lip.”

Jody is famous for her drooped lip face. In fact, I discovered today that if you do a google image search for “drooped lip chimpanzee,” the first three images that come up are of Jody!

But there’s another set of perhaps not as famous lips among the Cle Elum Seven – those of Negra. Rather than classic drooped lip, we like to describe Negra’s lips as “heavy.”

Below are some examples of each. What do you think is more charming – Jody’s drooped lip or Negra’s heavy lip?

 

JODY:

Jody drooped lip face profile

web Jody in grass drooped lip face YH IMG_2441

web Jody sit on structure YH drooped lip IMG_3467

web jody relaxed face drooped lip GH (dm) IMG_8183

web Jody close up drooped lip Young's Hill YH IMG_5486

web_Jody_drooped_lip_GH_ek_IMG_9663

Jody drooped lip while walking

 

NEGRA:

web_Negra_close_up_droopy_lips_enrichment_lie_down_catwalk_wood_toy_relax_PR_kh_IMG_2353

web_Negra_lie_under_blanket_catwalk_lip_protrude_pr_dg_IMG_4616

web Negra room four close up arms crossed lip out looking toward window

web Negra funny lip close up outdoor area IMG_0112

Negra heavy lip with eyes closed

web_Negra_heavy_lip_close-up_gh_dg_IIMG_2146

Grooming is so cool

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We’ve talked about the importance of grooming among chimpanzees before, and it’s pretty well known what an essential aspect of life grooming is for most primates. Below is a video of very good friends Burrito and Foxie grooming, with Missy (off-camera), occasionally also grooming Burrito.

There’s a lot of cool things about grooming. In a comment on a post back in 2009, I mentioned some of the following:

The basics: aside from the social aspects, grooming is the removal of dirt and debris and the tending to wounds (licking and picking scabs). It’s why chimpanzees don’t need baths – they do a really good job of cleaning themselves and each other – no water necessary.

The debris found on the grooming partner is not necessarily consumed, even though the lips are usually involved in grooming because chimpanzees use their prehensile lips, almost like another set of fingers, for many activities like inspecting objects, turning the pages of a magazine (in captivity), and especially in grooming.

Increased grooming often occurs after a conflict to reassure and/or “make up” with one another and to cement social bonds. Grooming has a calming affect, which is easy to see when you observe chimpanzees grooming one another. A study of wild chimpanzees that used non-invasive methods to collect urine samples after grooming bouts found that oxytocin (sometimes referred to as “the love hormone”) levels were higher in bonded grooming partners than in samples collected of chimpanzees who had not been grooming or had been grooming with a “non-bond partner.”

Regarding lip movements during grooming: it is common for chimpanzees, as well as other primates, to “lip smack” or “teeth clack” or make other “sympathetic mouth movements” when grooming (also when performing other fine motor behaviors – like many of us who move our tongue a certain way when we’re really concentrating on a task).

Each chimpanzee does his/her own thing, Burrito is a lip smacker (he may teeth clack on occasion too), Foxie is a teeth clacker, and Annie makes raspberry sounds with her lips. The intensity of the mouth movement/noise will increase if something (especially a wound or scab) is found during grooming.

Some scientists have hypothesized that these sympathetic mouth movements were an evolutionary step towards spoken language. Our friend Gabriel Waters and [former] Central WA University professor Dr. Fouts published a study on this theory a few years back: http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=1349990, and there was a book with this premise called Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language, which I admittedly still need to read, that argued that gossip for humans is what grooming is for chimpanzees and other non-human primates.

So, with all that information, here’s the video of Burrito and Foxie strengthening their friendship through grooming today: