July 2007 Archives

For my Enhanced Enrichment day, I chose "Casino Day" as a theme. It was a lot of fun getting the enrichment together. I purchased some sheets that had cards and dice on them. I found posters, too, that had Casino themes and even bought cards, chips, and dice for the chimpanzees to take up a real game, if they wanted to. The poker materials were everywhere at the end of the day so I imagine they had a good time throwing them and playing with them. I guess everybody came out a winner, especially me, as I got to decorate and choose all these fun things for them on this day.

I chose Casino Day because I didn't think it was a theme that has been done before. I knew it would be fun to investigate, play with, and toss around the dice, cards and chips. Also when I think of casino towns like Las Vegas and Atlantic City I think of lights and fun. I remember my trips to Vegas and Atlantic City as two of the best vacations I have been on -- and I don't even gamble! Casino Day at CHCI was just like being in there except the lights weren't quite as bright at CHCI as in Vegas, and the dice in Atlantic City aren't quite as big. However the patrons at this casino were a lot more interesting than what I usually see.

Tatu foraged underneath ALL the signs, and looked in the homemade dice I made for the fruit that we had hidden there. She even checked the purses and each of the pockets in the clothing we put out. (I think she gives us more credit than we deserve for finding good hiding places for the food.) We did hide food in the mouth of one of the stuffed animals. Loulis found the hidden food, and put it his mouth just the way he'd found it in the stuffed animal's mouth.

Casino Day turned out to be a smashing success! Especially, if you measure success by the mess at the end of the day. Washoe, Loulis, Dar and Tatu were all very enthusiastic, especially about the food. I think the decorations were appreciated too.

Friday was my choice for enrichment day. I chose India day since I have been there three times. My mom sent four saris (6 yards of beautiful fabric a piece) that she donated to CHCI. I painted the Taj Mahal to put on the wall.

I also bought a couple of Hindu-based children's books. One was a picture book of many of the Hindu Deities. I tore the pages out and glued them to colored construction paper and an awesome staff member (thanks Lynn!) laminated them for future use. I also bought a beautifully illustrated book on the Hindu deity Hanuman, the monkey god.

Hanuman helped Rama defeat the most evil Rakshasa god, Ravana. Ravana asked Brahma for immortality, but was refused. He then asked for domination and invulnerability over all other gods and wild beasts, but because he had contempt for humans and monkeys and already felt superior, he did not ask for the same protection from them. Even thousands of years ago, the Indian scholars believed monkeys and apes were akin to humans! If you take the first "an" out of Hanuman, you get HUMAN! When Ravana kidnapped Rama's wife Sita, Hanuman was the only being, of monkeys or humans, who could fly across the water to Ravana's island to rescue her. The monkey and the human armies combined to defeat Ravana.

I left this book out for my chimpanzee friends. When they came out, Tatu peeked inside the book and seemed very curious about it. Unfortunately, I had to get back to work and was not able to stay long enough in the observation area to see any of them pick it up and look at it. When I cleaned up that day, though, the Hanuman book was in another room. I'm guessing they did flip through it, as they do like to flip through magazines and books. The other day, while on the berm, I watched Dar hold a magazine in one hand, hold on to the ledge he was balancing on with the other hand, and flip the pages of the magazine with his lips! Amazing!

The apprentices on duty the morning of my enrichment did an awesome job when they helped me set things up. They draped the saris across the wooden platform, giving the east room an exotic, tent-like feeling.

Tatu loved the saris my mother donated! I watched her drag one of them around with her foot all day. When she would stop to rest, she would bunch it up and hold it. When they were invited into the night cages for dinner and sleep, Tatu dragged in two saris, wrapped them around herself, and slept with them.

I found a large pack of bindis at the college bookstore on their clearance table. I took them in and everyone wore a bindi on their forehead all day. We all enjoyed India day very much!

Hello everybody! My name is Mark Darrah and I'm one of the 10 apprentices this summer selected to help out at CHCI. Each apprentice was given a day for which it was their job to come up with an enrichment theme. I grew up in Fountain Valley, a city in OrangeCounty that is anywhere from a 45 minute to an all-day drive Los Angeles, depending on traffic, of course. As I grew up so close to Hollywood, I decided to create a Hollywood themed day for the chimpanzees.

Most importantly, of course, was starting out with a Hollywood sign. I made my version of the Hollywood sign out of butcher paper and black markers. I thought it would only be right if I drew stars all over the paper, so I brought out the yellow markers, too. I asked one of the techs what room the chimpanzees usually stay in the most and I was told the East room. About a week before my enrichment day I was signed up to help clean in the East room, and while I was washing everything down I was able to look around the room and see what I wanted to do with it. I noticed that on one of the walls there is a painting of a farm with some rolling hills and I thought to myself, "What better place to put my Hollywood sign than on these painted hills?"

The ideas started to flow now and I thought that it would be best to give my theme day a sub-theme, and I came up with a movie premiere. I went home and drew two movie posters on poster board, for a movie titled "Look Who's Signing," starring Washoe, Tatu, Loulis, and Dar. I also took another piece of poster board and drew a scene from the movie; keeping in the Hollywood theme I drew the 4 chimps having fun at the beach. Washoe and Tatu were playing volleyball, Loulis was surfing, and Dar was relaxing on the sand soaking up some rays.

Since they were now big movie stars they have to have their own stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. I made each chimp their very own star with their name and picture on it.

I also thought "What movie premier would be complete without exiting a limo onto a red carpet?" I couldn't get a real limo into their play room, so I designed my own. I got three pieces of butcher paper and one I drew the back of the limo, on another I drew the top of the limo, and on the third I drew the front of the limo. I put these pieces of paper around the door they enter to get into the East room from the West room, so the door became the door of the limo. I put red colored poster board on the ground so that when they walked into the East room it would look like they were walking out of a limo onto a red carpet. I added nice shoes, dresses, coats, and purses to make the event a little more formal. I even threw some Hollywood tabloid magazines in the room for them to look at.

It was also a food enrichment day so I put out popcorn and dried fruit inside blank CD cases so that the chimpanzees would have to figure out how to open them up if they wanted the treats inside. I made covers for the cd cases that all had a California theme to them: Hollywood Nights, Hotel California, California Love, California Girls, and I Love L.A.

I felt that my enrichment day was a success and I hope that the chimpanzees had as much fun looking at and interacting with their new enrichment as I had in coming up with it and making it.

Each spring, students at CHCI help prepare a flower, fruit, and vegetable garden for the chimpanzees. The garden grows along the outside of the fencing of the chimpanzees' outdoor enclosure, up on the berm.

This year, we've had a lot of help from CHCI students and the summer apprentices, in preparing and maintaining the garden. Earlier in the spring, Anne, Debbie, Gina, Katie, Kristen, Jason, Jessie, and Shannon all helped prepare the soil and plant the seeds. This summer, the apprentices -- Ande, Cristy, David, Hallie, Jan, Lindsey, Katrina, Mark, and Shona (but not Greta; she managed to sleep through the whole thing) -- along with Anne and Gina, have all pitched in to keep the weeds under control.

 

This year, we've planted all sorts of tasty treats in the garden. We've sunflowers, melons, watermelon (CANDY FRUIT) edible flowers including snapdragons and pansies (FLOWER), cucumbers (GREEN SLICE), tomatoes (RED SLICE), raspberries & strawberries (BERRY), chives (ONION GRASS), mint, oregano, and basil. The fruit on the apple trees and peach tree are beginning to develop and the branches are already hanging low over some portions of the berm path.

Washoe and her family get very excited about the garden growing on the berm. From their outdoor play area, they get to watch the whole process, from prepping the soil, to the sprouting of the plants, to the development and ripening of the fruits. They often request treats from the garden from caregivers when the caregivers are up on the berm, and can make and use tools to get things from the garden themselves. For example, one day last week, Tatu spent nearly half an hour manipulating a fire hose through the fencing to draw branches of a mint plant close enough to the fencing that she could snake a hand through the gap beneath the fencing, capture the stalk between two fingers, and pinch off the tender tops with her other hand.

 

We will plant another garden in the fall. If you would like to be a part of the chimpanzees' fall garden, we'd love your support. Write us an e-mail if you would like to provide fall plant seeds, plant starts, or donate garden tools.

We at CHCI are excited to welcome our 10 new Summer Apprentices. The apprentices have an intensive period of training, assisting with research, cleaning enclosures, preparing meals, assembling enrichment, and lots more ahead of them. If Jason can twist a few arms, we should have some postings from apprentices about their experiences soon.

We seem to have a tradition of using plays on words for things at CHCI -- think "Chimposium" and "Chimporium". Pan troglodytes is the species name for chimpanzee, and we simply could not resist the opportunity to play around with it for the blog: Pan bloglodytes was born.

Welcome to Pan bloglodytes, the official website of the Chimpanzee and Human Communication Institute. This blog will house stories and reminiscences about experiences with Washoe and her family, information on current research at CHCI, and much, much more. We invite you to share with us your comments on these posts.