Making the “chimp cam”
May 4, 2012 by J.B. -
We’re so excited to finally be able to share the “chimp cam” videos with everyone and we’re grateful to King 5 News for introducing the chimps to some new people.
Many of you had questions about the new camera, so we put together this video (with some new footage of the chimps!) to show you how it was made. We were able to purchase the camera thanks to a fundraising drive launched by our wonderful blog readers, and volunteers Jakob, Jessy, Rachel, Adrienne, and Janna helped us install the cameras on Young’s Hill.
Unfortunately, the camera won’t allow us to stream live video on the internet. We are still limited by our poor internet connection (that’s life in the country) and, with the size of our enclosures, you wouldn’t see the chimps very often unless we had a lot of cameras (unlike the popular bird’s nest cameras). But we’re always looking for new ways to share the chimps’ lives with you, so we hope to have some more surprises in the future.
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You’ve finally done it!! Given us the closest thing to being up on the hill with the CE7!! I loved the fingers and the lips right up close to the camera lens!!
I’ll be the first person to admit that I’m not much for the manual labor part of things because of a bad knee, but I want to say a “bless you”” to the volunteers that helped make this camera thing happen. Many thanks to all of you!!!
I went and got something to drink and now I’m going to watch the whole thing over (and over) and over again!!! 🙂
Thank you all for giving us another way of seeing our dear Seven. Love their curiosity.
Somehow I missed this blog fund raising drive but I am SO thrilled with the results! Thank you to all involved.
I missed the blog fund raising drive too but this is just awesome!! More great videos to come. Thanks all!
Wonderful! Ingenius! Love seeing the chimps and their reactions to the camera.
I could watch this all day! I love how they both explored the new object with thier lips…and seeing the others behind thing enjoying the hill is wonderful! Thank you so much for sharing.
With all the poking and tasting I’m sure they’re a little disappointed that this new thing isn’t something fun or tasty for them, since life is so interesting for them now.
This is another fantastic way for us (blog readers) to learn more about them. The closeup of Missy’s foot as she stood on the ledge was interesting – as we see very few closeups of their skin and hair – is it consistently course from head to toe or does it vary depending on where it is on their body, like (human) head hair and body hair? Also, how thick is their skin compared with the 5 or so layers of human skin?
We look forward to seeing more installments of Chimp Cam 7!
Hi Sara – I’d say that the coarseness of their hair is fairly consistent across the body. However, I have noticed that some chimps have softer hair than others.
I have always understood that chimpanzee skin is generally thicker than ours. This is certainly true on the hands and feet, and not just where callouses develop on the soles of the feet and the knuckles on the hand from contact with the ground. The skin on their palms is almost leathery. However, the skin on some other parts of their body doesn’t feel noticeably thicker to me, so I’m not sure if the difference is consistent. I wasn’t able to find any references for this question in my quick search, so I’ll post here again if I can find anything more definitive.
What an amazing video, loved it.
What a great idea. Thank you – it is always a delight to see what’s going on.