• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest

Hope. Love. Home. Sanctuary

  • Our Family
    • The Chimpanzees
    • The Cattle
  • Blog
  • About Us
    • Visiting the Sanctuary
    • Philosophy
      • FAQs
      • Mission, Vision & Goals
      • Privacy Policy
    • The Humans
      • Staff
      • Board of Directors
      • Founder
    • Annual Reports
    • The Future of CSNW
    • CSNW In The News
  • You can help
    • Donate
      • Become a Chimpanzee Pal
      • Sponsor A Day
      • Transfer Stock
      • Be A Produce Patron
      • Be a Bovine Buddy
      • Give from your IRA
      • Personalized Stones
      • Bring Them Home Campaign
    • Leave A Legacy
    • Employment Opportunities
    • Volunteer
    • See Our Wish List
    • Events
  • Resources
    • About Chimpanzees
    • Enrichment Database
    • Advocacy
      • Apes in Entertainment
        • Trainers
        • Role of the AHA
        • Greeting Cards
      • Chimpanzees as Pets
      • Roadside Zoos
      • Chimpanzees in Biomedical Research
      • Conservation
        • African Apes
        • Orangutans
  • Shop
    • Merchandise Store
  • Contact
  • DONATE NOW

washoe

Play All Day (while the humans work)

February 9, 2018 by J.B.

Lately, Missy and Annie have been doing what they do best – playing all day!

Meanwhile, the humans have been busting their butts to move caging, glass, and other material from the former Chimpanzee and Human Communication Institute (CHCI) at Central Washington University before its demolition.

The building had sat largely empty in the years since Tatu, Loulis, and many of the staff and students associated with Friends of Washoe moved from campus to the Fauna Foundation in Canada. When the university determined that the building would be torn down to accommodate construction of a new dorm, they agreed to remove as much reusable material as possible and donate it to CSNW for use in our upcoming expansion. (Click here for a video from local news channel KAPP about the donation). But a jump in the timeline for the building’s demolition meant we had to get the material out with little notice. Thankfully, an emergency call to our local supporters on Facebook was met with an enthusiastic response, and just days later we had trucks, trailers, and lots of manual labor lined up and ready to help. In only a few hours, we loaded thousands of pounds of caging, steel doors, and 270-lb chimp-proof windows…

…and then unloaded it all at the sanctuary.

Alan, an CSNW intern, made the mistake of volunteering on the day that we needed to manually unload the nearly 4,500-lb of glass from the trailer. He is young, however, and likely had the use of his arms the next day, unlike some of us.

Our expansion project has been full of frustrating setbacks throughout the permitting process – lately around the location and design of a new driveway we are required to put in – but we are getting closer! And when we do break ground, we will do so knowing that we will be putting this material to good use and saving thousands of dollars in the process. It is a small but significant part of CHCI’s legacy, and a great way to remember and honor the chimpanzees that taught us so much.

Filed Under: Play, Sanctuary, Volunteers Tagged With: central washington university, chci, chimpanzee, northwest, rescue, Sanctuary, Volunteers, washoe

Learning to speak chimp

August 12, 2016 by J.B.

The thing that originally sparked my interest in chimpanzees was the fact that they could learn sign language. Ape language studies of the ’60s and ’70s not only helped bridge the gap between the complex languages of humans and the seemingly much simpler grunts, barks, and chirps of other animals, but they hinted at a possibility almost too magical to believe: could signing chimpanzees actually tell us what they were thinking?

They could, and they did. Many of us at CSNW were lucky enough to help care for some of these signing chimpanzees during their later years and to converse with them in the process. And never have I been as humbled as I was on my first day of training, when I realized that the chimps signed faster and with a greater vocabulary than I could understand. This was a good way to put a new graduate student in his place.

As amazing as that experience was, however, we ultimately learned an even greater lesson from our mentors: Animals don’t need to learn our language to tell us what they are thinking. We can learn theirs.

Spend enough time around chimps and you start to absorb their mannerisms. You bob your head during greetings and crouch down low when placating a dominant chimp. You extend an arm when you need help and stomp your foot on the ground when initiating a game of chase. You pick up on the subtleties of their facial expressions, covering your top teeth when you smile and pouting your lips in sympathy when someone is upset. And if you’re not too self-conscious, you start to sing along when they pant hoot in excitement, or join in breathy laughter when tickling them with a stick.

web_burrito_profile_playface_raceway_kd_IMG_3902

Training as a caregiver at CSNW means training in chimp language, because the chimps never stop communicating their thoughts and desires. From the moment we walk in the door in the morning, they are telling us what’s on their minds. For Jamie, it’s all about boots. She can’t wait for her caregivers to don a pair of her favorite cowboy boots and chase her around the chimp house. She tells us what she wants by gazing and pointing toward the boot bin while stomping her feet. She has a mental catalogue of all the boots in her collection and knows which pair she wants, and if we draw up the wrong pair she shakes her head and tells us to try again.

It’s easy to figure out what Jamie wants, though, because she’s so predictable. The same is true for Negra, who claps to prod her caregivers into action at least 30 minutes before each mealtime. Other situations require more thought. Sometimes Burrito greets us exuberantly first thing in the morning and initiates a game of chase. We chase after him for a while until he stops suddenly and begins to blow raspberries while pointing at something just outside the enclosure. Our eyes scan the ground until we finally come across the real reason for his excitement: a piece of food left over from the previous night’s dinner, just out of reach. Missy does something similar, except that her games of chase always end at the window facing the garden, where ripe cherry tomatoes grow just a few feet away. Her hand points towards the garden while her gaze switches back and forth between our eyes and the tomatoes, drawing an imaginary line between the two. The phrase “ulterior motive” had to have been coined by someone who worked with chimpanzees.

web_Burrito_portrait_studio_look_at_camera_FR4_ek_IMG_5541

Throughout the day we hear updates from the chimps from afar. When a threat bark pierces the silence of an afternoon meal, it means that one of the caregivers has unwittingly violated the chimps’ social order, perhaps by serving food to a low ranking chimpanzee out of turn. Alarm calls can be easily differentiated into degrees of severity – single “hoo” calls mean that one chimp has seen something they can’t quite make sense of, while multiple “waa” calls mean that the group has identified and rallied around a source of danger. Even the “waa” calls can be broken into different levels of intensity, telling you whether they have uncovered a small garter snake or a large, and potentially deadly, rattlesnake.

web Jamie JOdy search for critter log bridge grass YH IMG_6795

Closing up at night involves a routine that might sound familiar to anyone with young kids, but instead of “can you read me just one more story” or “can I have a glass of water”, it’s “can you give me just one more troll doll” or “can I have the boots you walked in this morning.” This process of making sure the chimps have everything they want before they go to bed can last for the better part of an hour, depending on their moods, and sometimes involves dumping everything out of the toy bins so that they can pick out exactly what they want. But when you figure out what they want, whether it’s that black pair of boots with the white stitching or the new Dora the Explorer doll, they often let you know with a low moan, while clutching the item gently to their chest. Reminiscent of Chewbacca, the low moan indicates satisfaction, and tells us all is good.

web_Foxie_and_dora_friend_FR_bench_jb_IMG_2993

We talk to each other like this all day long and at the end of the day, the only thing left to say is “goodnight”, which in chimp-speak is delivered as a series of soft grunts, pants, and hoo’s known collectively as nest grunts. We caregivers often initiate this as we lock up for the night, and the chimps respond in turn. It’s a subtle and beautiful chorus; a vocalization that began high up in the trees of central Africa but somehow echoes from cozy blanket nests in a small sanctuary in Cle Elum.

It says, “we are all safe now, see you tomorrow,” in a language all their own.

web_Negra_sleep_blanket_nest_catwalk_PR_ek_IMG_5509

Filed Under: Chimpanzee Behavior, Intelligence, Sanctuary Tagged With: asl, chimpanzee, communication, expression, gesture, language, northwest, rescue, Sanctuary, sign language, vocalization, washoe

Annie’s cousin?

September 5, 2011 by Debbie

Annie’s birthday is Saturday, so I thought I’d share a picture taken from when the raceway to Young’s Hill was built:

When I first met the Cle Elum Seven in 2008, I was working at the Chimpanzee and Human Communication Institute (CHCI) in Ellensburg, just 20 miles away from CSNW. I was going to grad school studying the chimps’ use of sign language (which coincidentally, all of the CSNW staff members did before me as well).

I remember when I first saw Annie, I immediately thought she looked like Washoe.

Washoe and Annie were both captured from Africa. Washoe originally was captured for NASA to be a space chimp, but she was too big and so she ended up in Reno, NV where she learned sign language. Washoe lived in a couple different places across two decades before she was given sanctuary at CHCI, but thankfully she was never used in invasive biomedical research. She was much luckier than Annie, who was taken from Africa and put straight into invasive research.

Regardless of their backgrounds, captivity is never ideal for a chimpanzee. We can’t ever make up for the amount of space they would normally have in the wild, but with the opening of Young’s Hill, Annie will have more space to roam than ever before since leaving Africa.

Filed Under: Annie, Sanctuary, Young's Hill Tagged With: animal protection, animal rescue, Animal Welfare, Annie, chci, chimp, chimpanzee, chimpanzee rescue, Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest, Cle Elum 7, Cle Elum Seven, csnw, primate protection, Sanctuary, washoe

Primary Sidebar

Subscribe To the Blog and Get Notified of New Posts First!

Archives

Calendar of Blog Posts

June 2025
S M T W T F S
1234567
891011121314
15161718192021
22232425262728
2930  
« May    

Categories

SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER

Footer

PO Box 952
Cle Elum, WA 98922
[email protected]
509-699-0728
501c3 registered charity
EIN: 68-0552915

Official DDAF Grantee

Menu

  • The Chimpanzees
  • Blog
  • About Us
  • You can help
  • Resources
  • Contact
  • Donate

Proud Member of

Connect With Us

Search

Copyright © 2024 Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest. All Rights Reserved. Site by Vegan Web Design