Orphaned chimpanzee finds home in Oklahoma City Zoo

Ruben's mother, Rukiya, died of a heart condition shortly after Ruben's birth at the Lowry Park Zoo in Tampa, Fla. Attempts to integrate Ruben into other troops failed before he was brought to Oklahoma City in July.

By Matt Patterson | Published: September 17, 2012   

 

Ruben the chimpanzee's first months in this world have been anything but easy.
His mother, Rukiya, died of a heart condition shortly after his birth at the Lowry Park Zoo in Tampa, Fla. His biological father was deemed too intense for him. And another female chimp at Busch Gardens in Florida also was too much for the pint-size primate.
“Our two females liked him but none of them picked him up, neither of them were that interested,” Lowry Park curator Lee Ann Rottman said. “His father wanted to play all the time and Ruben just wasn't ready for that.”
Rottman said one of the saddest aspects of the early part of Ruben's life was that his mother had already been a surrogate to another baby chimp.
“We had very high hopes for her as a mom,” Rottman said.
But the now 8-month-old chimp looks to have found a home at the Oklahoma City Zoo. Ruben arrived along with three handlers in July on a private jet donated by a supporter of the Lowry Park Zoo.
Ruben has found a surrogate mother in Kito, who has never had any offspring of her own. Ruben was introduced to Kito and Zoe and the rest of their troop after three days of monitoring by zoo staff.
Kito was chosen for the role as surrogate mom because of her success playing the role of surrogate to Siri, another chimpanzee at the zoo. Siri was brought to the Oklahoma City Zoo after her mother's breast milk was found to be nutritionally deficient and could not meet the growing chimp's needs.
“We chose Kito because she has the patience of a saint,” Oklahoma City Zoo curator Laura Bottaro said. “We knew this from how she handled Siri.”
Kito and Ruben were a natural fit, Bottaro said. But Ruben had to be cared for around the clock after his arrival. Baby chimps need to be held at all times, Bottaro said. Staffers at the zoo wore special shirts designed to mimic the hair of chimpanzees.
“The transition from humans can be uncomfortable for the infant because they're not sure they fit in,” Bottaro said. “Once they fit in, they're in.”
No guarantee
Curator Robin Newby said the hierarchies of chimpanzee troops can be complex. And even though Kito had been a successful surrogate before, there was no guarantee it would work again.
“It is very strict and complex,” Newby said. “They feel the need to keep individuals in check at all times. There's a lot of demonstrations either vocally or physically to accomplish that.”

Kito showed off her experience rearing infants almost immediately. When it was bedtime, her technique to keep Ruben near her was the same she had used for Siri. “Her strategy is to gather all of the nice bedding material each night, things like hay and wood wool, which is shredded wood,” Bottaro said. “She puts that stuff around her. She never forced him. She waited for him to come to her. She was saying to him, ‘Unless you want to sleep on a hard floor, you have to be in my vicinity.'”
With the addition of Ruben, the zoo now has nine chimpanzees in two troops. Ruben even bonded quickly with Mwami, the dominant male in his troop. Mwami is protective of Ruben. They're not quite father and son, but more like nephew and fun uncle. Mwami often pats Ruben's head and incites him into play by doing a dance in front of him.
“The one concern I had is this infant was a male and the other two we've had to pair with surrogates were females,” Bottaro said.
“Sometimes in the wild, if the dominant male is not the biological father, that can be a problem. But that didn't happen.”
A ‘true boy'
Even as Ruben clings to the security of adults, he does venture off on his own. Rottman said at Lowry Park, Ruben was rambunctious and a “true boy” who loved to eat.
He has continued on that path in Oklahoma City.
“For a youngster at his age he's very independent,” Newby said. “He'll go back to his surrogate mom for a little check-in and then he's off playing with the dominant male.”
Ruben will remain out of public view until he is fully integrated with all of the zoo's chimps. But that day is coming soon, Bottaro said. And when it does it will be the final step in his journey that took him from Florida to central Oklahoma. It also highlights the cooperation between zoos. It was painful for Rottman to give up Ruben, but she knew it was for the best.
“The staff here truly loved him,” Rottman said. “But we knew this was the right decision and we had so much faith in the staff at Oklahoma City because they've done this before. It is a truly wonderful situation he's in now and we couldn't be more pleased and thankful for that.”

NEWS - OLIVER , FAMED CHIMPANZEE -DIES :(

Oliver, famed chimpanzee, dies

June 02, 2012 

San Antonio Express-News
By Michelle Casady

Oliver, the chimpanzee who spent much of his life as part of circus shows or in research labs, was found dead Saturday in his bedroom at Primarily Primates, the sanctuary where he spent his last 14 years.

He was at least 55 years old, while the average lifespan for a male chimp in captivity is 35.
Oliver’s girlfriend, Raisin, was by his side when caretakers found him, said Stephen Rene Tello, executive director of the sanctuary.

He came to Primarily Primates from a research lab in Pennsylvania in 1998. Tello said the lab didn’t perform any studies on him during his decade there because the staff could tell he was special: “He was just on a different level; he had very humanlike traits.”

For one, Oliver walked upright almost all the time. His unique qualities drew international attention, and he was dubbed the “Humanzee,” touted as a missing link.

Oliver was the subject of a Discovery Channel documentary in 2006, and the character Caesar in last year’s “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” was said to be based on him.

“But for the last part of his life, he got to live in a safe haven — a nonexploitive, noncommercialized world where he was surrounded by people who love him and in companionship with others of his kind,” Tello said.

Shelly Ladd, enrichment coordinator at the sanctuary, said part of her job was to keep life interesting for the aging chimp, who was mostly blind, had no teeth and suffered from arthritis.

“He loved coconut sorbet — that got the biggest hoots and hollers,” she said. “But if he didn’t like something, he’d hand the bowl back to you,” like the time he tried sugar-free pistachio pudding.

Tello said a “dignified final ceremony” has been planned. Oliver’s body will be cremated, and the ashes spread over the sanctuary’s grounds. And Raisin will be reintroduced to some old friends.

MOVIE REVIEW - 'CHIMPANZEE' (I Wanna See This!)

Movie review: 'Chimpanzee'

With a wealth of informative TV wildlife programming already in the marketplace, Disneynature faces a Darwinian dilemma. How can the studio's zoology unit create films that will put paying audiences in theaters? In “Chimpanzee,” the strategy is clear: Make dramas, not documentaries. With its emphasis on entertainment rather than edification, the film occupies a warm-and-fuzzy middle ground between “The Jungle Book” and Animal Planet.

The new nature film follows a baby chimp named Oscar and his clan, observing them as they forage, use tools, play games, and care for one another. Just like humans, our primate relatives grapple with issues of dominance, family organization, reciprocation, competition and altruism. They even make war, fending off a rival pack of chimps that wants their nut grove. We face most of the same problems, and sometimes we come up with the same solutions.
Filmmakers Alastair Fothergill and Mark Linfield get intimately close to their subjects. In shots of chimps learning to crack hard-shell nuts with rocks, you can almost feel the sting when they whack a toe instead. When Oscar's life takes a sad turn midway through the film, the story becomes a real-life “Bambi of the Apes.”

Tim Allen's folksy narration fulfills its mission, which is not to deliver Jane Goodall-quality anthropology but to show kids that wild animals are amazing. So are the jungle plants. Some of this visually gorgeous film's most indelible images show puffballs shooting out spores in slow motion, phosphorescent fungi glowing at midnight, and delicate mushrooms growing in time-lapse hyperspeed. The film is not designed to answer every question but to inspire youthful curiosity.
The youth-friendly plotline involves Oscar's primal need to find his own place in the hierarchy, while the group battles villainous antagonist Scar and his pack. Purists may object to covering animal tales with cheesy sentimentality, but there's nothing wrong with capturing your viewers' hearts en route to their heads.
At one touching turn, I heard a small voice in the row behind me stoutly declare, “I am not crying.” Job well done.
— Colin Covert, Star Tribune (Minneapolis)

NEWS - ORPHANED BABY CHIMP IS ADOPTED BY ANOTHER MOTHER AT ZOO IN INCREDIBLE TALE OF COMPASSION AMONG OUR PRIMATES

Orphaned baby chimp is adopted by another mother at zoo in incredible tale of compassion among our primate cousins

 

By Allan Hall

Last updated at 1:24 PM on 11th February 2012


A baby chimpanzee has found a new mother in a zoo in Germany after she was rejected by her own.
Three-week-old female Nayla's adoption by another chimp at Osnabruek Zoo, north-west Germany, shows the high level of nurturing and maternal instincts of man's closest animal cousins.
More importantly, for a bewildered and lost little mite, it means that Nayla will not have to be raised by human hand but can live among her own.

Nayla was born at Osnabrueck Zoo three weeks ago, but her mother, Vakanga, 17, rejected her at the weekend, casting her aside in her enclosure.
Normally this would have meant instant intervention on the part of zookeepers if he was to survive.

But, before they could step in, zoo staff witnessed something remarkable. A eight-year-old male called Kume stepped in as a surrogate father to the abandoned infant.
Keepers watched as he lovingly groomed the orphaned chimp and carried her around like females do.
Wolfgang Festl, in charge of the primates at the zoo, said: 'We saw at the weekend that she was on her own. And then just hours later she was being cared for by Kume.'
For an entire day the zoo staff watched what was taking place at the colony, where 10 chimps live together.
Mr Festl said: 'Throughout the day Kume was grooming the baby, walking around with him and even stuck his finger in his mouth to keep him quiet - like a dummy.'

Zoo inspector Hans-Jürgen Schröder and director Dr Susanne Klomburg hoped Vakanga would take Nayla back because, helpful though Kume was, he could not feed his new daughter.
Dr Klomburg said: 'If that failed, we hoped we could give a bottle to the baby if Kume sat near the bars.
'Chimps learn through observation and if we had more time we could have showed Kume what we wanted to do with a dummy or a doll.'
But Kume didn't let little Nayla out of his grip for days, and she grew gradually weaker.
Then on Tuesday this week Kume finally left baby Nayla alone and staff we able to enter the enclosure and give her some much-needed milk.
And then keepers witnessed something even more extraordinary.
Nayla was picked up by a chimpanzee called Vanessa, aged 27, who put the infant on her back with her own two-year-old daughter, Lila.
Vanessa is able to feed Nayla and has been accepted as having another youngster in tow by the group - a complex and strongly hierarchical structure.
Dr Klomburg added: 'Little Lila was a bit peeved at first having to share the attention of her mother with another. And Kume was off sleeping - being a stepdad took it out of him!'
Chimps rejecting their young is an extremely rare phenomenon - but another chimp adopting such an outcast is even more rare. 
'At least there is a happy ending to this story,' said Dr Klomburg.

NEWS - CHEETAH THE CHIMP DIES OF KIDNEY DISEASE

Cheetah the Chimp Dies of Kidney Disease 

 

The chimp, who starred in the 1932-34 Tarzan movies with Johnny Weissmuller, was one of the most popular residents at Palm Harbor's Suncoast Primate Sanctuary.

• By Sunde Farquhar
•  
•  Cheetah-Mike, a well loved chimp who was one of the main attractions at Palm Harbor's Suncoast Primate Sanctuary died from kidney failure Dec. 24. Cheetah-Mike was in his 80s.
  The Suncoast Primate Sanctuary made the announcement about Cheetah's death on the organization's Facebook page Tuesday afternoon:
  

  "It is with great sadness that the community has lost a dear friend and family member on December 24, 2011. Cheetah, star of the Tarzan films, passed away after kidney failure during the week of December 19, 2011. The Sanctuary's residents and volunteers would like to thank all of the community members for their continued support as the Sanctuary continues to expand on the legacy and foundation Cheetah continues to oversee as he watches over his supporters, friends, and family."
  

  Shortly after the announcement was made, Cheetah's fans began to leave their condolences on the Suncoast Primate Sanctuary Facebook page.
  Judy Eddy wrote, "so sorry for the loss of another one of Gods creatures He will be missed I vist often with my grand daughter Jordyn"
  Adria Bernstein says, "My heart goes out to you and all of those whose lives he touched! May he be at peace and full of love, up above :)"
  Amelia Bigler Miller wrote, "R.I.P. Cheetah, so glad that I got to see you a couple of times, such a great primate he was and so entertaining."
  From Danielle Kuehner, "R.I.P big boy. i love you"
  Jodi Welling Austin wrote, "I'll never forgetting hearing him from the other side of the farm playing basketball. He could dribble a mean ball. So glad I just saw Cheetah recently, as did my daughter for the first time. RIP and hugs to Debby."
  Elena Louvros wrote, "Oh my heart breaks a little each time an animal passes away. Honored that I was able to see Cheetah several times over the years....even back in the day of the 'Chimp Farm' years...Thank you, Sanctuary, for letting this sweet boy live out his years under your compassionate care."
  Cheetah wrote about his life at the Suncoast Primate Sanctuary in his blog on Palm Harbor Patch. You can read Cheetah's blogs here:
  
• Cheetah the Blogging Chimp
• SPS Cribs (aka: Suncoast Primate Sanctuary Cribs)
• Keeping up with the Caregivers
• Extreme Makeover: Sanctuary Edition 
• Blogging Chimp's Latest Work: No Ordinary Troop

The Suncoast Primate Sanctuary Foundation of Palm Harbor is a nonprofit organization run by volunteers. The sanctuary cares for primates and other animals from a variety of backgrounds: some were rescued from abusive situations or were circus performers, and others were pets who could no longer be cared for by their owners.

NEWS - CHIMPANZEE RESEARCH IN TEXAS COULD FACE CHANGES

Chimpanzee research in Texas could face changes

December 19, 2011 9:17 AM ET

By DON FINLEY

SAN ANTONIO (AP) - At the chimpanzee playground, scattered with primary-colored concrete platforms and truck tires and ropes to climb, a graying chimp lies on his back, legs crossed, as if to study the heavens. But it's the human visitors his eyes follow.
"Each one of these animals has a personality," said Dr. Melissa de la Garza, the veterinarian in charge of the day-to-day care of the 149 chimps at the Texas Biomedical Research Institute. "Not all animals look for human interaction. The chimpanzee does."
It's a complicated relationship. Chimps and people are so similar physically, genetically and — to listen to their caretakers — even in personality, that de la Garza often brings in local physician specialists, rather than vets, to treat them. In the winter, the humans take care not to pass their colds and flu to the chimps.
For that very reason, chimps have been prized by scientists for their usefulness in certain kinds of scientific research in which similarity to people is critical. And for almost 50 years, chimpanzees have been studied at the San Antonio facility.
"They've contributed greatly to our understanding disease processes, including AIDS in the early years," said Dr. John VandeBerg, scientific director of Texas Biomed. "We were the first to infect a chimpanzee with HIV. Our work was critical to the development of the hepatitis B vaccine with chimpanzees. We were involved in the development of the hepatitis A vaccine with chimpanzees."
That contribution is evolving.
Last Thursday, the director of the National Institutes of Health promised stricter rules governing the use of chimps in research, based on new recommendations by an expert committee of the Institute of Medicine.
How much current research the new rules would prohibit depends on whom you ask. The committee that wrote the recommendations said they would preclude all but a small number. The head of the NIH predicted half. And VandeBerg, perhaps hopefully, believes they will impact local research little or none, depending on how they are interpreted.
The recommendations were developed in the wake of a controversy in the middle of which VandeBerg and Texas BioMed found themselves.
Last year, hoping to save $2 million, the NIH announced plans to move 186 chimps it owns from an Alamogordo, N.M., facility no longer doing research to San Antonio, where they could be enrolled in new studies.
That brought a long-simmering debate to a furious boil. The plan drew opponents ranging from actor Gene Hackman to former N.M. Gov. Bill Richardson, and breathed new life into efforts by the Humane Society of the United States to remove all chimps from research labs.
"I think we were a significant force in encouraging this review when the Alamogordo chimps were going to move to your neck of the woods," Humane Society President Wayne Pacelle. said. "One outcome of that was that NIH called for this IOM report."
But that was only one part of what VandeBerg describes as "a three-front war, basically."
The Humane Society also petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to declare captive chimpanzees as endangered. A similar petition almost 25 years ago led to endangered status for wild chimps, but the government opted to list captive chimps only as threatened — mainly because of their value to researchers.
The group also is lobbying hard for the Great Ape Protection and Cost Savings Act, which has more than 130 sponsors in the U.S. House and would make illegal nearly all research with chimps.
"We treat chimpanzees with a special respect and reverence because they are more similar to humans than any other animal," VandeBerg said. "And we're proud of the conditions in which they live here. But I think it's our moral and ethical responsibility to do this research with chimpanzees, in order to develop as quickly as possible the capacity to save millions of human lives."
Sabrina Bourgeois swears she knew at age 5 she wanted to work with chimpanzees. On visits to the zoo, her parents would leave her to watch the chimps while the rest of the family went to gaze at the hippos and giraffes.
Today, the 31-year-old behavioral specialist and trainer is part of a six-person team in charge of the chimps' psychological and emotional needs.
She knows their names, celebrates their birthdays and knows what DVDs they like to watch ("The Jungle Book" is high on the list) when the maintenance crews shoo them off the playground.
"They can be very mischievous and they can be stubborn," Bourgeois said. "Some love to play. And they'll do all sorts of things, similar to children, to enlist you to play."
One of her main jobs is making their involvement in research studies less stressful. Although chimps aren't subjected to the kinds of invasive studies the baboons and monkeys sometimes are — those can involve surgery and euthanasia — chimps often are injected with sedatives and experimental drugs. In hepatitis studies, they undergo needle liver biopsies, in which tissue is removed using a syringe.
Not that the studies are always benign. A few have died from testing the safety of promising but volatile monoclonal antibodies, a type of therapy that tinkers with the immune system in sometimes unexpected ways, VandeBerg said.
Bourgeois trains the chimps to present an arm or leg voluntarily for injection. That training is a long and continuous process, with plenty of praise and rewards — Hawaiian Punch and Dora the Explorer yogurt in particular.
There's a bond that forms between the staff and chimps, she said, and it's based on their intelligence and humanlike emotions. But despite that bond, she's a supporter of the research done here — and not just because of the paycheck, she said.
"I had a close friend and mentor who had hepatitis C," Bourgeois said. "He was 44 years old and came to see me two months before he passed away. He went through a year of trying experimental treatments for hepatitis C that made him so sick he was down to 100 pounds. He was suffering, and he opted not to go through them anymore.
"Unfortunately, there is at this time no effective treatment for hepatitis C, and I don't imagine we will have one without these chimpanzees."
Opponents, of course, have a different view. Like the IOM committee, they believe most chimp research today is unnecessary, with alternatives available.
"These are a highly endangered species, and society places a special value on animals who are so rare," the Humane Society's Pacelle said. "Related to that is that these animals are so highly intelligent and social that confining them in laboratory setting brings with it a major moral cost."
In addition, Pacelle said, they're so expensive to maintain — estimates range from $300,000 to more than $600,000 over the lifetime of each chimp — that those tax dollars could be put to better uses, especially given the fact the animals are used in so few studies.
Dr. Francis Collins, director of the NIH, said in announcing the new guidelines that there are no savings to be had in moving chimps from labs to sanctuaries. Under federal law, taxpayers must support retired research chimps throughout their lives, and the cost is about the same in either setting.
Four studies involving nine chimps are under way at Texas Biomed. Two are testing new therapies for safety before they're tried in people. And two are looking at the underlying mechanisms of hepatitis C and E.
Robert Lanford, an expert in hepatitis at Texas Biomed, was one of a number of scientists who argued before the IOM committee that science isn't quite ready to relinquish chimpanzees.
"My opinion is, we need somewhere between three to five more years of the kind of immunological studies in chimpanzees that are infected with hepatitis C — meaning infecting an animal and monitoring it from the time of infection, and understanding its outcome," Lanford said.
VandeBerg said he believes Collins has a broader interpretation of the guidelines than the IOM committee that developed them. While the committee estimated very few studies would qualify under the criteria in the guidelines, Collins estimated half would. And a second committee he's organizing to evaluate which studies to continue is likely to include experts in such research, which the IOM committee lacked, VandeBerg said.
"I don't believe that the impact on our research will be great," he said.
In the past year, VandeBerg has emerged as perhaps the leading defender of chimps in science. The federal government supports eight national primate research centers. Of those, only two — including the Southwest National Primate Center at Texas Biomed — use chimps in research. The other, the Yerkes primate center at Emory University in Atlanta, uses them only in behavioral studies.
"Ironically, I've never used chimpanzees for my own research," VandeBerg, a geneticist, said a few days before the IOM report was released.
"I'm arguing the case as a national primate research center director who has seen over these decades the research that's been done with chimpanzees and the value of it to human life. I've seen how well these chimpanzees are taken

NEWS -FEDS LIMIT USE OF CHIMP IN MEDICAL RESEARCH

Feds limit use of chimps in medical research

 

TRACY CONNOR

Thursday, December 15, 2011

The feds say they’re going to save the chimps — by banning most experimentation on the closest thing to a human in the animal world.
The National Institutes of Health policy unveiled Thursday comes in response to a panel’s finding that using the primates for research is usually unnecessary.
Because chimpanzees have genetic similarities to people and show a high level of intelligence, scientists have long prized them as subjects in biomedical research.
But NIH Director Francis Collins said it’s the animals’ close relationship to humans that “demands special consideration and respect.”

The Troubled Life of Nim Chimpsky

Peter Singer

 

“Men have forgotten this truth,” said the fox. “But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.”
—Antoine de Saint Exupéry, The Little Prince

Perhaps Herbert Terrace, professor of psychology at Columbia University, and director of the experiment that is the subject of Project Nim, a new documentary by James Marsh, never read The Little Prince. The sad story of Terrace’s irresponsible treatment of Nim, the chimp he tamed—or more strictly, whose upbringing in a human family he organized—is the guiding thread of this revealing film, which raises important issues about the distinction between humans and animals, about our attitudes toward animals, and about scientific objectivity (or the lack thereof) in behavioral research.
Nim was born in a primate research center in Norman, Oklahoma. His mother, Caroline, was treated as a breeding machine—all her babies were taken from her for use in experiments. She knew the routine well enough to turn her back to humans as soon as her baby was born, presumably hoping that they would not notice him. But how can a chimpanzee hide her baby, when she lives in a bare cage? Nim was taken from her a few days after his birth, to be used in Terrace’s experiment testing whether sign language could be taught to a chimpanzee. (His full name, Nim Chimpsky, was a play on the name of the linguist Noam Chomsky, who had suggested that only humans have the ability to learn language.)
The film, which draws on Elizabeth Hess’s fine book Nim Chimpsky, overplays the novelty and significance of Terrace’s research. It neglects the real pioneers in this field, the psychologist Keith Hayes and his wife Cathy, who in the 1950s tried to raise a chimpanzee called Vicki as a child, to see if she would learn to speak. The attempt failed, but in 1966 another pair of psychologists, Beatrix and Allen Gardner grasped that the failure may simply have been due to the inadequacies of chimpanzee vocal chords for forming words. They therefore brought up an infant chimpanzee, Washoe, in their own home, using American Sign Language to communicate not only with Washoe, but, when Washoe was present, with each other. Washoe learned many signs, using them singly and in combinations that appeared to be sentences. She even invented some of her own terms, like “candy fruit” for watermelon.
Those who insisted that language is unique to humans, however, simply raised the bar on what counted as language. Some claimed that Washoe had not demonstrated that she really understood the signs she was using. Perhaps she was just imitating her human “parents.” They wanted to see chimpanzees use signs creatively, in novel combinations, or, taking their lead from Chomsky, they insisted that to prove that chimps are using language, it would have to be shown that they implicitly understand and use the syntactical rules that are critical to grasping the difference in meaning between “Mary gave the ball to John” and “John gave the ball to Mary.”
In 1973, Terrace set out to do something similar to what the Gardners did but with, he hoped, a more rigorous focus on whether a chimpanzee really could use language in the same way that humans use it. He arranged for the infant Nim to be adopted by Stephanie LaFarge, a free-spirited former student of his who was bringing up her own family in an apartment on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. In selecting LaFarge, he neglected the crucial element of expertise in sign language. According to LaFarge’s daughter, Jennie, who is interviewed in the film, no one in the house was fluent in sign language. The family did not limit their communications to sign language when Nim was present and La Farge did not even begin to communicate with Nim using signs until he was three months old—an inauspicious start, given that infant chimpanzees develop more rapidly than humans. In other respects, Nim was treated as a new human addition to the family, dressed in human clothes, fed what the family ate, and most importantly, loved and cuddled as a human baby would have been.
Once the teaching began, Nim did pick up some signs. But Terrace wanted more structure in Nim’s learning. He put Laura-Ann Petitto, a student, in charge of Nim’s education. LaFarge and Petitto obviously did not get on. In the film Petitto describes the atmosphere in the LaFarge home as “chaotic” while LaFarge says of Petitto: “She came out of nowhere as a cute little thing from Ramapo.” Terrace organized sessions in which graduate students taught Nim signs, not in his home but in a windowless room at Columbia.
Terrace then decided that Nim would no longer live in the undisciplined atmosphere of the LaFarge household and placed the chimp in Petitto’s care—a decision LaFarge compares with the original taking of Nim from his biological mother. Was this decision influenced by something other than Terrace’s desire to do what was scientifically best for the project? Terrace denies it: “I had strong personal feelings about Laura, but I don’t think that got in any way in the way of our science.”
Nim was moved to a large mansion owned by Columbia University, where he had plenty of space, and where Petitto and two other teachers and carers could also live, while others came as visitors, giving him regular signing lessons. They developed a system for recording Nim’s signing, which was progressing rapidly. Terrace says that at this point the project was “literally humming.” Nim developed a vocabulary of about 120 signs and the project was featured in several magazines and television programs. But Nim was getting stronger, and at times, quite aggressive.
He attacked Petitto several times—in the film she shows the location of one bite that needed 37 stitches, and of another that hit a tendon. That may have made her think of leaving, but as she tells the story to the camera, it seems that a brief romantic involvement with Terrace—and the abrupt way he then ended the relationship—was the most significant factor. “It was the humans I wanted to leave, not the chimp,” she says. She detached herself from the project, and was replaced by Joyce Butler, who had come to the project to write her undergraduate thesis on Nim. Now she became his third surrogate mother. But it wasn’t long before he bit another teacher severely enough to put her into hospital. That, combined with difficulties in raising further funds, led Terrace to decide to end the project after only four years.
Terrace called the group together and told them that they already had ample data that needed analyzing and there was no point in continuing. Nim’s carers and teachers were stunned, but Terrace was telling them of his decision, not seeking their views.
But where should Nim go? From the time he was taken from his mother, he had never known another chimpanzee. He had lived with humans, worn human clothing, and eaten human food. When sorting photos of humans and apes, he placed his own photo among the humans. He had never lived in a cage. Yet Terrace sent him back to the primate research center in Oklahoma. Butler, who went back to Oklahoma with Nim, says “It was just a nasty thing to do… very deceitful.” On camera, she breaks up, crying, as she recalls prying herself free from Nim, who was trying to hold tight to her.
Terrace visited Nim there a year later for a pre-arranged photo shoot. Nim recognized him immediately and engaged him in play and signing, but when Terrace left, Nim just lay there and refused food. Terrace admits that the primate center turned out to be “surprisingly more primitive” than he had remembered and confesses to feeling that what he had done was “not the right thing to do… I was definitely doing something that he would feel was unjust or wrong.” Nevertheless Terrace took no steps to get Nim transferred out of the facility.
Project Nim tells a moving story of the remainder of Nim’s life—he died in a Texas wildlife refuge in 2000—that I will not retell here. The documentary also sheds some light on the way in which Terrace wrote up the results of his research. Before his abrupt decision to close down the project, he had shown enthusiasm for the way in which Nim had learned to sign. Yet in the book that he wrote afterward, he declared it a failure, joining the skeptics in denying that chimpanzees are capable of language. After viewing the videotapes, he concluded that what appeared to be communication was mere imitation.
Some of Nim’s care-givers were startled by Terrace’s sudden about-turn. For Terrace, like some other researchers at the time, the fundamental question was whether a chimpanzee could create a sentence. Nim used signs in combinations, like “Give Nim banana.” If a human child said that, we would all think she had uttered a sentence. As for the idea that Nim’s signing was mere imitation, or a response to a stimulus that elicited the sign, there was ample evidence of Nim initiating conversations. How could that be mere imitation?
Project Nim ended prematurely, at a time when Nim was young, and still learning. It was impossible to tell what he might have achieved. Moreover, Nim had had a checkered upbringing. If he was not learning rapidly enough to satisfy Terrace, might that not have been due to his unsettled home life, and the succession of teachers he had had, rather than to any innate inability to learn language? In the film Terrace himself says “You just can’t count on having outstanding teachers all the time.” But maybe if Terrace himself—who is described by one of Nim’s teachers as an “absentee landlord”—had been more involved in the project, the standard of teaching would have been higher. Was it possible that Terrace had taken such a negative view of Nim’s abilities because dumping a language-using, humanized ape back in a cage with non-language-using chimpanzees would be worse than doing that to an animal without the ability to use language?
Whatever the reasons for Terrace’s verdict regarding Nim’s abilities, it served to reinforce the view that language is a distinguishing mark of what it is to be human. Money for research on teaching language to nonhuman animals dried up, and the whole field was set back for at least a decade. It is now clear, though, that Terrace was wrong to suggest that signing in apes is always some form of imitation. Roger and Deborah Fouts, psychologists who now co-direct the Chimpanzee and Human Communication Institute, at Central Washington University, managed, after a struggle, to take over responsibility for Washoe from the Gardners, and ensure that she did not meet the same fate as Nim. They observed her teaching her companion chimpanzees to sign, and using signs in novel ways, including asking questions about the future—for example, after a snowfall, asking about the “candy tree,” their term for the Christmas tree they get each year.
Perhaps the most rigorous proof that nonhuman animals can understand language comes from the primatologist Sue Savage-Rumbaugh’s research, although her work concerned not chimpanzees but their close relatives, bonobos. Savage-Rumbaugh trained bonobos to use a keyboard to sign, thus eliminating any uncertainty about what was or was not being signed. Kanzi, a bonobo who began to pick up signs without any training, while observing his mother being trained to use the keyboard, clearly understands complex novel sentences. For example, when asked, for the first time, to “make the dog bite the snake,” he takes the toy snake, puts it in the mouth of the toy dog, and closes the dog’s mouth over the snake. He does not put the dog in the snake’s mouth. (In Kanzi’s Primal Language, Savage-Rumbaugh and her co-authors Pär Segerdahl and William Fields suggest that Terrace’s failure to make comparable progress with Nim may have been due to the fact that, in contrast to the way Kanzi picked up language from the environment around him, Nim was supposed to learn it largely in structured sessions, more like the way we teach children a second language.)
Eighteen years ago, Paola Cavalieri and I founded The Great Ape Project, an organization dedicated to the idea of giving great apes the moral status and legal protection that befits their nature. As the work of Jane Goodall, Diane Fossey, Francine Patterson, Birute Galdikas, H. Lyn White Miles, Roger and Deborah Fouts, Sue Savage-Rumbaugh and many other remarkable scientists has shown, chimpanzees, gorillas, bonobos and orangutans are self-aware beings, capable of thought, and with rich and deep emotional lives. Our idea is that the great apes, as our closest relatives, could serve as a bridge over the immense gulf we have dug between ourselves and other animals. Once one group of animals is included within the sphere of beings with rights, we hope that the extension of some basic rights to other sentient animals will be that much easier to make.
Fortunately, the idea that great apes should not be treated as tools for research—as opposed to the kind of relationship developed by Sue Savage-Rumbaugh—has made some progress since the time when Nim was sent back to Oklahoma. Experiments on great apes are now either banned or severely restricted in New Zealand, Australia, Japan, and throughout the European Union.
In the United States, a bipartisan group of members of Congress is supporting legislation to end the use of chimpanzees in invasive research. Project Nim shows that even when research is not invasive, it can have a devastating psychological impact on an animal. What happened to Nim was wrong, and should never happen again.
Project Nim is playing at the Angelika Film Center in New York and in theaters across the country.

PICKING UP MY CHIMPANZEE PAINTING

just some picks of me and my newest piece of artwork.
ENJOY!
MICHELLE

im pointing to a painting id REALLY like to own..done by another primate, a gorilla, matches my 1st painting i got last year.
2nd year its been hanging on the walls..
i said if it didnt sell this year, id be getting it for the next year.
which pushes back my next installment of having an Orangutan painting...

we shall just have to see whats there when the opportunity arrives..maybe ill have some reborn monkeys for sale in this gallery next year, of course, for donation towards the OKLAHOMA ZOO.

NEWS - CHIMPS VS. HUMANS in RWANDA

Chimps vs. humans in Rwanda

Is this the rise of the Planet of the Apes? Battle lines are drawn in Rwandan forest.

Jon Rosen August 11, 2011  

KINIHIRA, Rwanda — Make way for chimps in Rwanda.
A new project proposes relocating human families so a group of chimpanzees will have a forest path to connect them to other primates.
Environmentalists say the chimps are doomed without the new corridor. But not everyone agrees that saving 20 primates is worth uprooting human lives.
Once widely covered by tropical forest, Rwanda's fertile peaks and valleys have gradually been taken over by farmland. With more than 10 million inhabitants in an area the size of Massachusetts, Rwanda is the most densely populated country in continental Africa and its land is growing ever scarce.
The country’s remaining forests are endangered as the consequences of past deforestation have mounted. As a result of reduced tree cover, Rwanda’s soil fertility has diminished, its rivers have silted, its hills have become prone to landslides and its biodiversity threatened.

Determined to reverse this tide, Rwanda is fighting back. This February, in what environmental groups have called a developing country “first,” Rwanda vowed to achieve country-wide restoration of its soil, water, land and forest resources over the next 25 years. To accomplish this, it’s working with communities to change attitudes about sustainable development.
Nowhere are Rwanda’s re-forestation efforts displayed better than in Kinihira, a sleepy village that hovers above the puzzle-piece-like inlets of Lake Kivu.
A century ago, this area was home to the 100-plus square mile Gishwati forest, where Batwa pygmy hunter-gatherers, Rwanda’s original human inhabitants, coexisted with chimpanzees and other primates.

Since then, Gishwati Forest has been gradually decimated, encroached upon by tea plantations, cattle ranching schemes, resettled refugees, and subsistence farmers with nowhere else to turn for land.
By 2007, Gishwati had shrunk to a trace of its former self, standing at a mere 3.4 square miles and rapidly disappearing. That’s when Rwandan President Paul Kagame and American conservationist Ted Townsend, founder of the Iowa-based primate research facility Great Ape Trust, signed an agreement to create a national conservation park designed to improve local livelihoods while at the same time enhancing biodiversity.
Home to endangered primates and surrounded by vulnerable human populations, Gishwati was a natural choice for the project. In the previous year dozens of locals had been killed by floods and landslides — direct results of deforestation. With land scarce, residents continued to infringe upon the forest.
“When we started working here, there were trails of cows inside the forest, people growing cabbages and cutting down trees for charcoal,” said Madeleine Nyiratuza, coordinator of the project, known as the Gishwati Area Conservation Program (GACP). “It was crazy.”
As a first step, GACP set out to reduce Gishwati Forest’s “hemorrhage,” according to Benjamin Beck, director of conservation at Great Ape Trust, which manages the project. It established a research presence in the forest, led by American primatologist Rebecca Chancellor, and hired a force of "eco-guards": unarmed, uniformed officials tasked with identifying illegal or unsustainable forest activities and working with locals to identify alternative means of livelihood. By employing local staff, working with schools, and supporting local artisanal cooperatives, the project began to inject financial benefits into communities while promoting more sustainable attitudes toward the forest.
More from GlobalPost: Population of rare gibbons found in Vietnam
Three years later, the project has not only put an end to the hemorrhage: through the demarcation of legal boundaries and the annexation of illegally occupied land, Gishwati’s protected area has actually increased by 67 percent.
Now, the project is seeking to go further. Gishwati’s 20 chimpanzees, which experts believe form the most densely populated chimp community in the world, will eventually be doomed unless they gain access to a larger gene pool. To facilitate this, GACP has proposed the planting of a forest corridor, averaging a width of a quarter mile, which will stretch at least 40 miles to Nyungwe National Park, a forest home to 400 other chimps, which was once connected to Gishwati. Rwanda’s government has included the scheme as part of Rwanda’s land use master plan that is currently under review by Parliament.
The endeavor is has drawn criticism because it will require the relocation of an unspecified number of human families to government-provided housing. Some charge that uprooting of human lives is a heavy price for saving 20 primates.
To Beck, this reasoning misses the point. By the government’s own admission, he says, the subsistence farming practiced in affected areas is unsustainable, as population grows and land is divided among more and more people. As a destination for eco-tourism, the Gishwati conservation center will create jobs to help local youths transition from idleness or unproductive farmwork to the country’s nascent services economy.
While most agree this shift toward sustainable livelihoods is necessary, the transition will not come easily. It’s a reality on display in Nyarusuku, a hardscrabble settlement a few miles down the dirt road from Kinihira.
Here, in this government-built community, a small group of Batwa pygmies ekes out a meager living performing ritual songs and dances for visitors. Though resettled from Gishwati in the 1970s, these one-time hunter-gatherers remain largely cut off from modern Rwandan society: unkempt, unable to hold formal jobs, and, as their performances glorifying forest life suggest, longing for better days past.
Though just a small percentage of those living near Gishwati, the Batwa’s struggles are symbolic of those faced by rural dwellers across much of Africa; confronted with environmental change and forced to embrace the modern world before they’re ready.
While it may seem appropriate, in this context, to view man and nature in a constant state of conflict, Benjamin Beck of the Great Ape Trust is quick to emphasize that sacrifices made for nature today are in the interest of man’s well being tomorrow. Gishwati Forest’s residents, he says, have come to understand this.
“There’s this idea that there is an inherent competition between conservation and population. I think we focus too much on the either or. We need to search for novel solutions that provide co-existence.”

NEWS - REP. ROSCOE BARTLETTE : BAN RESEARCH ON CHIMPS

Rep. Roscoe Bartlett: Ban research on chimps

By JENNIFER EPSTEIN | 8/11/11

In an impassioned plea, a Maryland congressman is arguing that the U.S. should ban scientific testing on primates, saying modern technology has made it unnecessary to subject “these magnificent and innocent animals” to pain and imprisonment.
Writing in an op-ed in Thursday’s New York Times, Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, a Republican, says that “Americans can no longer justify confining these magnificent and innocent animals to traumatic invasive research and life imprisonment.”

Bartlett, a former physiologist at the Navy’s School of Aviation Medicine, says that while he conducted tests on squirrel monkeys that helped send men to the moon safely and “believed such research was worth the pain inflicted on the animals,” he has since changed his mind.

He wrote that he can no longer support the kind of research that he conducted for years because “our understanding of its effect on primates, as well as alternatives to it, have made great strides, to the point where I no longer believe such experiments make sense — scientifically, financially or ethically.”
Because of his changed view, Bartlett has come together with Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) to introduce the Great Ape Protection and Cost Savings Act, which would phase out invasive primate research and retire the 500 federally owned chimpanzees in labs to sanctuaries.
Bartlett writes that he also supports the end of chimpanzee research as the Institute of Medicine on Thursday begins a two-day public hearing on whether there is still a need for it.
Nine countries, as well as the European Union, already forbid or restrict invasive research on great apes. “Americans have to decide if the benefits to humans of research using chimpanzees outweigh the ethical, financial and scientific costs,” he says, adding that “the evidence is mounting that they do not.”
Technologies including computer modeling, the testing of very small doses on human volunteers, and in vitro methods used to grow human cells and tissues have made primate research far less necessary than it once was.
“We also know more about the consequences of invasive research on the animals themselves,” he writes. “Biomedical procedures that are simple when performed on humans often require traumatizing restraint of chimpanzees to protect human researchers from injury, as chimpanzees are five times stronger than humans. For instance, acquiring a blood sample from a chimp can require a ‘knockdown,’ or shooting it with a tranquilizer gun. If you’ve seen video of a knockdown, you know it is clearly frightening and stressful.”
With all that in mind, Bartlett concludes that research on primates isn’t necessary or worthwhile.
“Continuing innovations in alternatives to the use of invasive research on great apes is the civilized way forward in the 21st century,” he says. “Past civilizations were measured by how they treated their elderly and disabled. I believe that we will be measured, in part, by how we treat animals, particularly great apes.”

ARTICLE- FACEBOOK GAME AIMS TO SAVE GORILLAS, TIGERS, AND MORE THROUGH PLAY

ill be adding this flash/game/link (somehow) as an additional page for people to play to help save endangered animals

MICHELLE
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Facebook game aims to save gorillas, tigers and more through play

by Joe Osborne, Posted Aug 8th 2011 4:00PM

If Zynga's past donations to Haiti, Japan and other ailing nations have taught us anything, it's the enormous capacity for Facebook games to help others in need. But Good World Games has decided to extend that good will towards others in social gaming to animals, namely gorillas.

Its newest game is called My Conservation Park, and the developer has joined in partnerships with the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, WildAid and three more organizations to donate 15 percent of the profits from all in-game purchases to helping those organizations save a wide variety of endangered wildlife.

Players connect to the game through Facebook, and must preserve and protect a series of parks for five different animal species: gorillas, tigers, whales, monkeys and sharks. Each park has its own native animals that players must care for in both its Protect and Erich modes.

In Protection Mode, players have to track down poachers and click them to rid the park of them. Once the nasty poachers are gone, you must clean up and preserve your parks by decorating them with items found in the shop in Enrich mode.

The game doesn't play much differently from standard social games other than the ability to turn the action on and off through Enrich mode and Protect modes. There are also a few mini games to play like Wildlife Tagging, which tasks you with tagging the animals you save, but not twice or you'll lose points. As you progress and successfully protect and preserve more animal habitats, you'll gain access to new parks, items and animals to save.

However, it's up to you to make donations through the game's primary currency, simply known as Gold. But we bet after one look at those adorable cartoon animals--or the extra information (and video courtesy of Sigourney Weaver) Good World Games provides--you'll start reaching for the old wallet. The only thing this game needs is a cameo from Alanis Morissette.

Click here to play My Conservation Park through Facebook Connect Now

NEWS - SPRINGFEILDS OWN BOB BARKER GIVES LOUISIANA MONKEY HABITAT $230,000

Springfield's Own Bob Barker Gives Louisiana Monkey Habitat $230,000

Chimp Haven in Keithville, LA Plans to Expand its 200 Acre Facility

August 01, 2011|by Joe Daues KSPR New

Springfield native and animal activist Bob Barker has stood up for dogs, cats, whales, pigeons, elephants and all kinds of other animals.     Five chimpanzees are the beneficiaries of his latest donation.
Chimp Haven in Keithville, La., said his donation of $230,000 last month will pay to expand the 200-acre habitat to make room for the five chimps and care for them for one year.
Barker said the chimps came from a Texas research laboratory that went bankrupt.
Barker, who grew up in Springfield and now lives in Los Angeles, says the chimps have spent their whole lives on concrete in cages but now they will live in the forest and because they are curious and smart, they are expected to adapt well.

The 87-year-old Barker spent 50 years on television, retiring in 2008 from "The Price is Right."
     

NEWS - ENEMIES OF CHIMPANZEES THROWN OUT OF BIASED COMMITTEE!

Enemies of Chimpanzees Thrown Out of Biased Committee!

Posted By: People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals

To: Members in 429 Causes

Enemies of Chimpanzees Thrown Out of Biased Committee! Dear Friend, I want to share an exciting development in PETA's continuing effort to end the exploitation of chimpanzees and other great apes in experiments. Last year, the American public vehemently opposed—and ultimately prompted the cancellation of—the transfer of nearly 200 retired chimpanzees back to a laboratory where they would be imprisoned in small cells and abused in infectious-disease experiments. As a result, the federal government commissioned the National Academy of Sciences' Institute of Medicine (IOM) to conduct a study to determine whether the U.S. should continue to allow invasive experiments on chimpanzees. The U.S. bears the shameful distinction of being the only nation in the industrialized world to do so. In spring of 2011, the committee members were announced. Instead of giving chimpanzees a fair shake, the IOM heavily stacked its 15-member review committee with animal experimenters and people from institutions that have openly lobbied against federal legislation to end chimpanzee experimentation. PETA immediately wrote to the IOM protesting the biased committee, calling for it to be disbanded. I am delighted to report to you that after hearing from us, the IOM removed three committee members to whom we objected, one of whom works for a pharmaceutical company that experiments on chimpanzees, and two others—including the committee chair—whose institutions directly lobbied against protections for great apes. While the removal of these individuals from the committee bodes well for chimpanzees, these intelligent and sensitive animals still need your help! Please help keep them out of laboratories. Click here to let your senators and representatives know that you support the Great Ape Protection and Cost Savings Act, which would ban invasive experiments on chimpanzees and other great apes once and for all. Thank you for all that you do for animals. Very truly yours, Kathy Guillermo Vice President Laboratory Investigations Department People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals P.S. For the best way to stay on top of urgent alerts and help animals, join PETA's Action Team today!

NEWS - DISPUTE SENDS OKLAHOMA CITY ZOO CHIMP INTO MOATAGAIN

Dispute sends Oklahoma City Zoo chimp into moat again
Mwami, the alpha male chimp at the Oklahoma City Zoo, spent about half an hour in the moat surrounding his habitat after a fight among the chimp troop.

BY CARRIE COPPERNOLL
Published: March 26, 2011
A male chimpanzee at the Oklahoma City Zoo jumped over an electric fence and into the dry moat surrounding his habitat Friday afternoon.

Zoo officials issued a code red about 11:20 a.m. Friday, zoo spokeswoman Tara Henson said. A code red is issued when a dangerous animal is out or has the potential to be out of its exhibit.

Mwami jumped into the moat surrounding his home Friday at the Oklahoma City Zoo. Oklahoman archive photo


Some zoo visitors were escorted indoors until officials determined Mwami could not escape the moat and therefore was not a threat, Henson said.

Mwami was allowed to use a cargo net to climb back into the chimp habitat.

The entire incident lasted about half an hour, she said.

Mwami went into the moat four other times between Aug. 30 and Oct. 8. He has never had the ability to escape, Henson said.

Each incident was preceded by fighting in the chimp troop.

Zookeepers have been monitoring the chimp troop even more closely since Mwami began going into the moat, said Jennifer Davis, supervisor of the zoo’s Great EscApe. Officials have been rearranging the chimps into smaller groups to observe their interactions.

Mwami is the dominant male in the group, but breeding issues have sparked disagreements within the strict social hierarchy, Davis said.

Mwami is recommended to breed with two females in the troop: sisters Abby and Kito.

He prefers Kito, the younger of the sisters, Davis said. This angers dominant female Abby, who then lashes out at Mwami and sometimes enlists the help of other chimps.

Davis said she thinks Abby might be put on birth control to tame her anger and dull her desire to breed with Mwami.

The good news, Davis said, is that chimps are quick to forgive. The animals will reconcile and even hug after fights.

“They’re quick to make up,” she said. “It’s incredible to see.”
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
my latest painting i got was a MWAMI painting!
MICHELLE