Posts Tagged ‘great apes’
Pee, Please – It’s Urine Month!
It’s actually pretty cool to work somewhere that celebrates urine. Believe it or not, pee is really an amazing thing! Every urine excretion you make is like a report card from your body, sending in a bunch of grades from most of its complicated systems via a few ounces of liquid.
Read MoreAbnormal 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.
Read MoreA 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.
Read MoreGrand Opening of the Chimp Trails
The chimp trail system has been many years in the making. Its strengths lie in its accessibility, safety, and navigability.
Read MoreOutside Looking In: Enrichment
We all have these preconceived notions of what we think we know about chimps, myself included. It’s not our fault, really; we only know what we are taught. But trust me when I say that no carefully crafted nature documentary or Hollywood film could do them any justice.
Read MoreAural Hematomas in Chimps
There is normally not a lot of space in this area of the ear so when it fills, it can be very tight and cause an uncomfortable amount of pressure. If due to trauma, there could be bacteria trapped inside and potentially lead to an abscess. As the body tries to fix itself, it sends a lot of its helper white blood cells and tries to remove the blood and repair the aural hematoma.
Read MoreHealth Update: Latricia (Jan 2021)
In early November Trish’s swell became quite enlarged and as stated, that is not unusual; a very large swell can be natural depending on where the chimp is in her cycle. But Trish stopped eating some of her food, which was our first sign that she was not ok. Upon closer inspection, her swelling was not even, and we believed she had an abscess.
Read MoreHealth Update: Gertrude (Jan 2021)
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.
Read MoreLearn about chimpanzee conservation
Chimpanzee populations are now under more distress than ever before. A population that once totaled more than 1 million now teeters around 200,000. What can you do to help?
Read MoreHealth Update: Precious (Nov 2020)
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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