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Health Update: Gertrude (Jan 2021)

gertrude chimpanzee eating mashed potato

Gertrude has a history of abscesses (four have been observed since arriving at Project Chimps in 2016) and they have always resolved on their own without further intervention. But four in four years is too frequent to be coincidence and the pattern had to be investigated.

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Health Update: Precious (Nov 2020)

two chimpanzees walking

Precious arrived in sanctuary in 2018. During her exit exam from the New Iberia Research Center, her diagnostics showed that she was in the early stages of chronic kidney decline. We vowed then to offer Precious whatever she needed to be comfortable in sanctuary as her condition progressed.

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Health Update: Jamie (Nov 2020)

chimpanzee on a porch

Jamie is spry for her age. While she is active and agile, the team noticed that something was just a little off – she was drinking a lot of water. While subtle as that symptom might be, it indicated there could be something going on that needed to be investigated.

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How old is old?

Search the internet for “chimpanzee life expectancy” and you may read that chimpanzees live 50-60 years in captivity and a little less in the wild, or something to this effect. Now search human life expectancy and you may get lost in the search results as it varies vastly among countries and cultures, but you may find that some humans can expect to live to 100-115 years now!

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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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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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