A Nightly Treat
February 15, 2016 by Elizabeth -
Each night after a dinner of fresh fruits and veggies, the chimpanzees are given a “night bag” consisting of a handful of nuts, seeds, dried fruit, and other healthy treats. This tradition began on the chimps’ first night at the sanctuary, and they’ve enjoyed night bags every night since.
As soon as we pass out the night bags a hush falls over the group as everyone digs in. The chimps are masters at shelling the nuts and seeds with their mouths and then discarding the shells. Burrito demonstrates below.
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I always love seeing the handsome Mr. B enjoying his food!
I never tire of watching the Chimps and finding out what they’re up to. Burrito looks so content.
I LOVE Night Bags! I love the idea of them, that you’ve been giving them out every night since day one, the way the are packaged and served rolled up and slipped through the caging. And I really love how the chimps enjoy them! Such a treat to watch how satisfied they are as they indulge in their crunchy nighty-nite treats. I could watch a video of them enjoying night bags every night! ; ) Thanks for the video!!
I was wondering if you had ever thought of using a small custom fabric bags? Ones that could be washed, cut down on the use of paper products. I was thinking something that could be rolled up, maybe with a snap or two. Have to consult on a fabric choice durability vs wash-ability, but I do have access to very skilled seamstresses. How many would each chimp need per day?
Just a thought. Please do not hesitate to contact me if your interested. Have to get some kind of size ideas and I could mail you off a couple prototypes.
I should have added, that skilled seamstress etc would all be donated.
Hi Holly. Thanks so much for your sweet offer! We are always looking for ways to reduce waste at the sanctuary, but unfortunately, the chimps would likely destroy the fabric bags to get to the food inside. Chimps are voracious eaters, and combined with their superhuman strength, that means that it’s just as easy for them to rip a bag apart as it it to reach inside. 🙂
Thanks so much Elizabeth. I noticed the destruction factor in the video. I thought they might be intrigued with a draw string or snap. I’ll send you a few, made a couple different ways,,,. Worse case scenario they get shredded. No big loss. When I’ve seen the guys with tutus, socks and hats etc still in one piece :-). But that doesn’t really have anything to do with food, and the DNA drive to eat to survive. Not exactly huggable kind of folks. lol
what a nice treat for them.
Those are sunflower seeds, right? Talk about skill! I could understand peanuts, maybe, but I’d certainly never attempt to shell a sunflower seed in my mouth!
Holly good idea about cloth bags but then there is the expense and water waste of washing them, while you can recycle paper bags. Sometimes things what we think is an economical or environmental solution, isn’t really…. Water is as important an environmental commodity as paper.
Yes, that is one consideration. Other is, I’m not sure such a change to daily ritual would be met with happy chimps, but they also may like the novelty of new multi-coloured/patterned fabrics. Bags could more than likely be used for more than one day, some not so much. That is still 1000’s of bags a year, and them being so small, likely all the bags for one day would comfortably be added to the daily blanket washing with not as much impact, than if they had to have their own load. We have a tailoring shop, with lots of and lots of all kinds of fabric leftovers, and the bags would be so easy to make. Was just an idea to give. I’ve completely fallen in love with these guys, well and a whole bunch of orangutans too.!!
My favorite time of day.
Do we know what kind of diet chimps got in the labs? I hate to think that they were not given any stimulating food.
To the best of our knowledge, they subsisted primarily on primate chow (dry protein biscuits designed for laboratory primates), with the occasional fruit or veggie thrown in here or there.