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Abnormal Behavior in Chimpanzees

One way sanctuaries and zoos gauge a chimp’s emotional and physical well-being is to look for signs of abnormal behavior. Abnormal or atypical behaviors are scientific terms that describe behaviors that are often indicative of stress.

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A Harvest for chimpanzees

There’s no denying that chimps love to eat! Here at Project Chimps, their diet consists of fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds. In addition to daily breakfast and dinner services where each chimp gets a full meal, caretakers also scatter different food items like cabbage, nuts, seeds, carrots and tomatoes over their enclosures for lunch and dinner enrichment. This allows the chimps to engage in one of their natural behaviors — foraging.

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Girl Power

gertrude and latricia chimpanzee eating together

In the chimp world, females control a lot. Even though chimps live in a patriarchal hierarchy, the girls have a lot of influence. This understanding allows us to perceive chimp life and how it works.

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Movie Night

Chimps, like humans, enjoy a good movie. Their abilities to comprehend films helps us understand chimpanzees and how they think.

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The Art of Nest Building

Just like humans decorating a bedroom, chimps create their own spaces too. Each chimp has a specific preference when creating their nests. Knowing this helps us understand unique qualities among chimps and their habits.

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Positive Reinforcement Training – PRT with an EKG

If you know anything about chimps, you know you can’t make a chimp do anything it doesn’t want to do! If you need to, for example, listen to Kareem’s heartbeat with a stethoscope, that is absolutely not happening unless Kareem wants you to. This is where Positive Reinforcement Training, or PRT, comes into play.

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Nails Do Grow Back

A chimp that is playing and having a good time builds excitement levels that reach a certain threshold where it sometimes becomes aggressive behavior. Play then turns into chimps smacking each other. They are so strong that when their hands come down for a smack, they may nick each other. Sometimes a bigger wound can occur – like a fingernail might get pulled off.

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