Health Update: Armond (November 2021)

As we shared in September in our Aging Gracefully blog, Armond is not aging with grace.

He is now 35 and the enforcer in his group of 19 chimps. His duties as the enforcer make him more susceptible to injuries, as he gets in between other chimps who may have disagreements. This can put him in a situation where he might overdo it. And being a stoic older male, he tries his best not to show it.

But back in September, he had no choice but to show us just how far he had pushed himself. And we thought he might not fully recover.

The Fight

A fight broke out among the younger chimps of Chimps Ahoy and Armond did what Armond does, he got in the middle to break it up. Everyone went to their separate corners and calmed down. Within a few hours, all the chimps were back to hanging out as friends. It is not abnormal for arguments to become physical because chimp politics are very complex, and arguments help hierarchy.

Caregivers checked out all the chimps involved and saw no obvious injuries, just some hurt feelings.

Later that day, after everyone calmed down and reconciled their differences, Armond decided to take a rest. The chimps reside in large structures called villas and they need to approach the hoppers along the perimeter wall for their larger produce servings which caregivers can pass to the chimps in a safe manner. Armond didn’t want to leave his resting spots for dinner. Despite extra encouragement, he was not interested in coming to the hopper. Caregivers chopped up his meal smaller and then scattered it from above so that the morsels landed near where Armond sat.

He showed mild interest and took a few bites but was not enthusiastic about eating. Something was clearly more wrong than we could see. But Armond refused to present himself for the medical team to get a closer look. The next day he was favoring his leg but was moving around enough to get to the lixits, the water fountains in the villas, and took long drinks.  

Alpha female Lindsey spent the next few days tending to Armond as his constant companion. She was offering him food throughout the day and he finally accepted a few oranges and electrolytes. Eventually, we convinced Lindsey to help Armond navigate into a small room at the front of the villa where our medical team could observe him closer. In this smaller space, we could also ensure he could access his meals without having to move around as much. We attempted to hide medication in his treats, but he was being far too picky on his foods and hidden meds could have turned him even further. Also, without food in his stomach, the medication could have done more harm then good.   

After a lot of coaxing and good dose of patience, Armond finally started to eat more reliably. Thus he also began to take medications which clearly made him feel better. But we still weren’t sure what exactly had caused him so much distress and that meant we had to conduct a full exam and that involved a sedation.

The Exam

Armond does not typically cooperate for injections and his exam day was no different. One of his caregivers distracted him while another gave him the sedative injection when he wasn’t expecting it. Hopefully he forgives us for this trick – but it worked.

Within minutes Armond was set up for a full hands-on physical, urine collection, bloodwork, and xrays. Our dentist was also on hand to clean and check his teeth. The caregivers gave him a full manicure and even took ink stamps of his footprint. The proceedings were smooth and Armond was back in recovery within an hour.

Leading up to the decision of sedating Armond, the entire care team was asked to complete QOLs, or Quality of Life assessments. These score our individual perspective on how an animal is fairing in their current state compared to a previous state. This process was completed several times while we first watched Armond in the days following the fight, and again once he was residing in the smaller room. The scores continued to be entered after the exam and now ongoing while we watch his recovery.

The X-Ray

The physical exam revealed no external injuries. The bloodwork showed normal values for a chimp of his age. The urine results were unremarkable. The X-Ray however, that showed the cause for Armond’s unusual behaviors following the fight.

As you can see in this X-Ray image of Armond’s pelvis, he has abnormal hazy white images around his hip bones. This was reviewed by a veterinary radiologist and the condition identified as heterotopic ossification, or the presence of bone in soft tissue where bone normally does not exist.

The Prognosis

With a case such as Armond’s, there is little we can do to reverse those decades he spent in a confined space. Despite having access to decent-sized enclosures at the New Iberia lab for the years leading up to his retirement to the Blue Ridge Mountains, and despite now having access to multi-story villa and multi-acre yard … the damage to Armond’s hips were done a long time ago. With his age now, that long-ago trauma is catching up to him. As long has he pushes the limits on what his body can handle, he may once again find himself in a situation where he doesn’t feel comfortable moving toward us for food or medication.

We also can’t confine him. Could we put him in a small room all by himself and thus ensure we can always get him meals and meds? What kind of life would that be for him? Instead, he is residing with 18 other chimps, some of whom will continue to take their squabbles too far. Armond will continue to be the enforcer and insert himself in the center to break it up. And this could cause his hip issue to flare up and send his QOL scores plummeting again.

We’ll support him each time. But we know that eventually, hopefully a long way off still, he won’t rebound. And on that day, we’ll know it’s time to help him cross the bridge to a plain where bodily limits are longer part of the equation.

But not yet. Not today.

You can support our behavior team’s efforts to work with chimps like Armond to help them cooperate with their own welfare, make a donation today.