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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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Coronavirus Response Update

Oscar chimp laying sideways on a hammock outdoors

As the threat of the Coronavirus continues, Project Chimps’ executive director, Ali Crumpacker, outlines more of the measures we are taking to ensure the short-term and long-term health of the chimps and our Project Chimps family.

Here are some of the things we are doing now, with the caveat that the situation is extremely fluid and that some of these actions may be revised in the days and weeks to come, in keeping with government and industry recommendations.

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Chimps Leo & Ray’s Excellent Adventure

The day started out routinely, with our team checking on the
chimps, feeding their breakfast and cleaning their enclosures. But then the radios start squawking as the chatter between caregivers becomes an excited cacophony.

The message finally became clear: “Leo is outside!”

Chimpanzee Caregiver Samantha Jones recounts the story of former research chimps Leo and Ray’s brave first steps into the forest at Project Chimps.

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Focus on Chimps

Chimpanzee Lucky sitting among fallen leaves

Project Chimps sanctuary now hosts a one-day wildlife photography workshop. In the first session, held in Oct. 2019, eight participants get to went behind the scenes to photograph chimpanzees in the scenic Blue Ridge Mountains.

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Working fast and furious to help chimps

chimp sits in a blue hanging barrel

It was a warm spring morning and Christy Jellets was waste deep in muddy water. The dirty liquid roiled around her as she worked, hands well below the surface and out of sight, to repair a clogged culvert at Project Chimps.

While her team members were busy welding chimpanzee enclosures and clearing fallen brush, Christy noticed a job that needed immediate attention. So she jumped in…

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The 2010s: Our Legacy for Research Chimps

Former research chimpanzee Kareem

As we swing our way into the second Roaring 20s, we look back at the accomplishments made for captive research chimpanzees in the 2010s.

In 2010, the European Union banned testing on great apes, a full five years before the United States would follow suit, making the U.S. the last country in the so-called “developed world” to end testing on chimpanzees.

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Chimpanzee Maverick Braves the Danger Zone

Chimpanzee Maverick at Project Chimps

Mid-ranking male chimpanzee Maverick went right into the “danger zone” this week as two new males joined his social group of eight. Introducing new males into an existing chimpanzee society can be risky business, all Tom Cruise puns aside, so the chimpanzee care team at Project Chimps created a tactical plan for bringing the males together.

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Chimps Living in Harmony

Group of six chimpanzees sitting on a wood climbing structure outdoors

Project Chimps’ facilities team, care staff, and dedicated volunteers have been working tirelessly to make the south yard of the outdoor habitat a fun and enriching place for the former research chimpanzees in our care. Their hard work was worth it – the chimps are thriving outdoors. And they’re having a blast!

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