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Health Update: Paul’s tooth

By Gregory Rodriguez We recently helped Paul with an infected tooth that required specific dental tools. Paul is the smallest of his group and is among the lowest ranking. We know that sometimes low-ranking means being overlooked, but not at Project Chimps. Earlier in October our caregivers noticed that Paul wasn’t eating, he’s a chimp…

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Chimps Helping Chimps – Chimps Healing Chimps

Treating ex lab chimps—who have undergone countless procedures before retiring at sanctuary—is complicated. Staff at Project Chimps are highly sensitive to chimp residents who are averse to needles, mistrusting of humans, or have other hold-ups stemming from their traumatic past.

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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 Matter of Chimp Poop

Perhaps dealing with chimp feces isn’t the most glamourous part of a chimpanzee caretaker’s day, but it’s certainly one of the most important. Like in other species (including us!), fecal consistency is a great indicator of overall health, so, caretakers must constantly assess the quality of, well, chimp poop!

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Health Update: Latricia (Jan 2021)

latricia chimpanzee

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.

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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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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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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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