Posts by Diana
Missing Chimpanzee
We take safety very seriously here at the sanctuary and recognize that humans make mistakes, so we have checks and double checks as a routine part of entering enclosures. We never enter a chimpanzee space unless we have verified that the chimpanzees are secured in another part of the sanctuary, so part of our safety…
Read MoreWild Chimpanzees
Don’t tell Missy and Annie that they fall into the “elderly” category for chimpanzees. Just watch today’s video! All of the chimps REALLY enjoyed the cooler weather this morning and were out and about. I took about four zillion photos, but when I was going through them, I realized I needed to highlight the video…
Read MoreFull Spectrum Chimpanzees
Chimpanzees are charming, playful and adorable: They are quiet, gentle, and kind: They are willful, strong, and unpredictable: They are intelligent, curious, and intense: They are violent, petty, and dangerous: It sounds like pretty much every other species of animal, including our own, doesn’t it? We tend to show…
Read MoreDisplaying
In her book In the Shadow of Man, Jane Goodall wrote about a chimpanzee named Mike at Gombe who used a clever device to quickly rise in the hierarchy of his group. Here’s an excerpt from her book, which I found on this webpage: Mike’s rise to the number one or top-ranking position in the…
Read MoreJODY!
I woke up thinking that I should feature Jody on the blog today. She’s a bit more elusive than some of the other chimpanzees, so we don’t get as many photos and videos of her. She does have her routines, though. Today, we spread a forage on the hill at lunch, and Jody, true to…
Read MoreTwister Legacy
There are a number of things that I didn’t quite realize would be a part of helping to manage Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest. One of these things is the depth of love that I would be privileged to witness among the humans who support the sanctuary. I truly feel that the fans and supporters of the…
Read MoreA Moment of Peace
Negra is not normally a “greet the morning with gusto” kind of a person. Like myself, she is more of a, “can I please have just 10 (make that 20) more minutes of quiet before getting out of bed” kind of a person. In the summer months, she changes her morning routine, though. Often before…
Read MoreOne of each, please
Jody wins today’s lunch forage Save Save Save Save Save Save
Read MoreThe Queen on High Alert
Today, Negra was the first on the hill for the forage. At one point, she heard or saw something that she wanted to investigate further, so she stood up bipedally. This is not a posture we see Negra adopting very often, so I was very pleased to have gotten photographs: She looks pretty innocent…
Read MoreHighway 10 Fire
Today started out pretty normal. Us humans were busy cleaning all morning, with breaks to walk around the hill with Jamie and check in with the other chimps. We had finished cleaning the playroom and had started cleaning the front rooms. I was over by the playroom door and Jamie was craning her neck and…
Read MoreWhat’s in a Nest?
An intriguing article is making the rounds about a primatologist named Koichiro Zamma who has developed a bed, called the humankind evolution bed, that is based on how chimpanzees construct their own beds in the forests. Apparently he tried out a chimpanzee-constructed nest while tracking chimpanzees in the wild and found it to be very…
Read MoreYear Eight
We hope that you have been enlightened, entertained, and inspired by the musings on years’ past this week. Today’s final post in the looking-back brings us from June 2015 to last week, the eighth anniversary of the arrival of the Cle Elum Seven to Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest. The chimps’ eighth year began with a true…
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