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I first came to Ellensburg during the summer of 2008, when I temporarily moved here to be an apprentice at CHCI. I remember thinking, as I was driven around town my first day here, "I left California for this?" I was not excited to be here! Thankfully, once the program started, I made friends, and generally didn't have too much free time, Ellensburg began to grow on me. I even began to imagine myself coming back for graduate school, and enjoying living in this little town. Which is exactly where I am today.
    I am now a first year graduate student in the Primate Behavior program at Central Washington University. My time is split between taking three classes and working as an intern at CHCI, and spending time with my dog. Although a lot of things haven't changed from my time here last summer and now, a lot of things have. I think the biggest difference at CHCI is that now I have been invited into ChimpCare, a level of training at the institute where the interns can serve the chimpanzees their meals and interact with them by playing games such as mask and chase (on opposite sides of the caging, of course). I am very excited to begin my training and see where this journey takes me. I have enjoyed getting to know all the other new interns, and spending time with the friends I made last summer. I have even enjoyed being back in Ellensburg, going to some of my favorite restaurants and walking my dog downtown. Overall, I can't think of a better place for me to be!

Editor's Note: Deon was a summer apprentice at CHCI. You can learn more about the summer apprenticeship program here.

My name is Deon Schmalholz and I was a summer apprentice at the Chimpanzee and Human Communication Institute.  This apprenticeship was an eight-week program that began on June 28th and ended on August 21st.  I am going to share with you my wonderful eight-week experience at CHCI!

My days always started off with an early rise out of bed due to the promptness of the sun in Ellensburg.  It was as if the sun was saying, "Get up sleepy head and get a move on to your busy day!"

My day at CHCI began by getting a nice steaming cup of delicious coffee from the kitchen.  Every staff member here helps supply coffee and creamers so there are limitless amounts for the much-needed boosts in the mornings.  After my morning cup of Joe I was off to check my schedule on the job board!

There are lots of unique work duties at CHCI!  I could be scheduled to take observational data outside on the berm (this is an outdoor walkway overlooking the chimpanzee's outdoor enclosure), put together or make daily enrichment, or collect or enter observational data.  I could also be assigned to prepare meals for the chimpanzees, which was my favorite job!
I find great joy in preparing dinners for the chimpanzees!  The staff here allows us to explore our creativity in the kitchen!  You take a quick look in the fridge for ideas and voila, start your masterpiece! My creations included stuffed peppers filled with mashed potatoes, tomatoes, garlic and onions, and BBQ vegetables with rice and crouton skewers for fun!
All the apprentices also had research projects that they were assigned to during the program.  I was assigned to work on a survey study to measure the educational effectiveness of the new Chimposiums they have on the weekends for the public.  This study was very interesting and I had a great team to work with! 

Another great quality that I found at CHCI was the friendly people.  Every time I came into work everyone would greet me with a friendly smile and, "how are you doing today?" which is a wonderful thing to have in any workplace!  Also, if a problem or question ever arose there was always someone willing to help out!

I had a wonderful experience during this apprenticeship and I plan on taking all the valuable information I obtained with me to my future workplace.  I recommend this experience to anyone that is interested in the field of primate care and/or conservation.  These primates were amazing to work with and I cannot wait to share my experience with others when I am home!  Thank you everyone at CHCI for everything this summer!

Editor's Note: Emily was a Summer Apprentice with the Chimpanzee and Human Communication Institute over this past summer. You can learn more about the Summer Apprentice program here.

One day last week, Tatu, Dar and Loulis were in the outside enclosure, Dar and Tatu on the cement platform and Loulis now halfway up the caging, banging and shaking in Dar's general direction. In fact, Loulis had been threatening Dar on and off all morning, and after putting up with it for a long time, Dar started showing signs of agitation. As Tatu worked calmly at opening a coconut, Dar started rocking back and forth in front of her in a slightly threatening manner. But instead of becoming upset herself, or leaving the situation, Tatu signed CHASE to Dar, and a short game ensued. Tatu has often been observed trying to diffuse tense situations by "changing the subject". Unfortunately it was all a little too much for Dar and after a moment he stopped playing and displayed a fear grimace, to which Tatu responded by giving him a big hug and then grooming him for a few seconds. Then Dar, much calmer, left the platform and climbed to the top of a climbing structure. He seemed much more relaxed and even when Loulis threw a tire at him, he reacted in his usual nonchalant manner. It just goes to show a hug from a good friend goes a long way.

Last Thursday, Christina and I finally had our enhanced enrichment day. After "Googling" party themes about a month ago, we decided on Fiesta Day. I'd been waiting to have my enrichment day for about 6 months, ever since I learned that I'd be coming for the summer as an apprentice. I wanted to work really hard and for the chimpanzees to really have something to do, so I had a goal of making papier-mâché cacti filled with many goodies. I thought that breaking open a papier-mâché anything filled with treats would be fun for anybody. Needless to say, making a papier-mâché cactus isn't the easiest art project I've came across. Constructing my cactus took several days, a lot of small cardboard scraps, and even more masking tape. After realizing what slow progress I was making, I decided on only one cactus, and a bunch of papier-mâché balloons. Balloons were a much simpler solution. I painted the cactus lime green with pink tissue paper flowers, and we painted the balloons with all sorts of fiesta type designs. We painted a few different posters and bought one of almost everything from the party section of the dollar store.

Thursday morning arrived, and it was time to set up. Well, after a month of preparing, I realized that we had significantly more things than I thought we would have. The room looked good though, like a fiesta should. There were tissue paper flower chains hanging from the shaky tree to the walls. We had chains with plastic chili peppers all over. Fiesta banners and posters were hung in every color. Decorated balloons were hanging on the shaky tree, tied to the platform, on top of the platform, and hanging on the fire hoses. We had a large cardboard Mexican-style pueblo with windows that opened up with treats hidden inside. There were small cardboard boxes that I'd wrapped completely in bright yellow duck tape with treats hidden inside. I'd try to make all the treats double or triple secured to make it a little more time consuming to get to the reward.

My cactus had been hung on the top of the shaky tree, which ended up hanging upside down because the top was heavier than the base, but that was okay; I was just glad that it turned out so well.

When the chimpanzees were let in to the play rooms for the day, they instantly went for the cardboard margarita glasses that Christina had filled with frozen fruit and ice. Loulis went first for the pueblo and ripped part of it off, but didn't find all the treats. They all got to have some balloons. I saw Loulis rip one of them in half. Tatu ripped one of the completely duct-taped boxes open with her teeth and easily got her treat out. Dar took his time unwrapping the single very long piece of duck tape that covered the entire box. It was funny to see Tatu just rip it open and Dar take his time.

No one was getting my cactus, which was the part that I really was looking forward to watching them interact with. So Kelly told Dar to look at the green plant in the shaky tree. It didn't seem to matter much to him, he looked pretty content sitting up on the shaky tree with some treats that he'd found previously. Finally, Tatu went up and ripped the top off the cactus, leaving more treats for later.

Overall, I was very happy with how our enhanced enrichment day went. It looked really good, and I think that the chimpanzees had a good time breaking into everything. They are a lot stronger than we are, and I don't think even layers of duck tape posed too much of a hassle, but they were entertained for part of the morning.

So today's the day, Luau Day. Laura and I have been planning our enhanced enrichment theme for a couple of weeks. We decided that our theme would be "Dar, Tatu, and Loulis's Rocking Luau Day," mainly because we found a lot of super great luau decorations at the dollar store, so we figured we could build on that. We also built a bunch of cardboard box tiki-men, which we made into food puzzles, and lots of folks pitched in to make some more great decorations.


However, the piece-de-la-resistance, or rather, the "Pig-de-la-Resistance," would have to be the huge sacrificial pink cardboard pig that we built to hide pineapple in, lovingly named "Pepto." A luau isn't a luau without a pig roast, right?

 

Needless to say, we spent quite a while decorating the East Room, but it was totally worth it because the place looked great! We positioned ourselves in the observation area so that we could film and take pictures of the chimpanzees when they entered the room. The chimpanzees seemed pretty excited to come in and explore, too, although each took a different strategy: Dar headed straight for the pig, plucked the juicy red apple out of the pig's mouth, and proceeded to amble over to a nice quiet spot to enjoy his apple uninterrupted. After he was done with that, he found a coconut and headed up to enjoy it in the shaky tree, and later was observed leisurely leafing through a copy of Reader's Digest, coconut in foot.

Tatu had a range of strategies: first, a reconnaissance sweep of the entire room, checking nooks and crannies, and then, straight to the pig, which she proceeded to partially disembowel in search of pineapple. We were so happy that our pig was popular!

Loulis, on the other hand, apparently decided that the smaller forages were more to his liking, at least initially, and went for the tiki boxes and the smaller pigs that were scattered around the room, all of which had pineapple in them.

Later, though, Loulis took the pig to task and beat the living stuffing out of it. Poor Pepto was almost unrecognizable. At that point, all the chimpanzees were bagged out, apparently worn out by the morning's luau-tastic activities.

All in all, we like to think Luau Day was a big success. The only downside, of course, is that I am signed up to clean this afternoon. The "funeral" for Pepto is scheduled for 5:00pm.

Tonight, while conducting hierarchy observations in the area where the chimpanzees come in for dinner, I experienced firsthand a lesson in chimpanzee gastronomy. A bit of background:

First of all, preparing dinner for the chimpanzees can turn into quite an event, with lots of careful planning and creativity going into some of the meals. It's a fair bet to say that the chimpanzees eat better than I do. And I know I speak for more people than just me when I say that it's not uncommon to covet the chimpanzees' dinners. Here's the thing though...you might think that the chimpanzees will like something, given that it has all of their favorite ingredients (read: veggies, etc), and with the added bonus of an artful and creative presentation, you'd think that certain fare would be a sure success with the diners. Au contraire. For example, within the past two weeks, among the things that have shown up on the menu have been: homemade veggie pate, created and slaved over by Emily; and a full-out vegetable and noodle lasagna. I was particularly covetous of that lasagna. However, both items were pretty much fully snubbed by all of the chimpanzees. Dar, upon receiving his bowl of lasagna, promptly turned it upside down and deposited it on the floor. Talk about insulting the chef.

So back to the story: today, I was observing while the chimpanzees were being served their dinner. Tonight's special was rice with veggies. Boy, was that ever a hit. Granted, I haven't observed many dinners, but of the ones I have seen, this was  by far the biggest blowout success. Tatu in particular was a true fan. She pounded down the first bowl, and then asked for, and received, a second, then a third, then a fourth helping. Then, apparently she wasn't getting service from the human caretakers fast enough, so she walked over to Dar and ever so casually swiped the bowl out of his hands, and walkd away, whereupon she continued finishing Dar's meal. Now you might say, aw, poor Dar! Well, don't feel too badly for him. Like the good-natured guy he is, he just walked over to where Tatu had abandoned her own still-half-full bowl, and polished off the rest of hers. But Tatu wasn't done. Then she asked for, and received, a 5th serving. Upon deciding she was done with that, she then walked over and swiped Loulis's bowl from him! In total, I definitely saw her go through 6 bowls of rice. Granted, she wasn't fully consuming all the contents of the bowls. Rather, she picked out her favorite things, but still, I've never seen her eat so much. And she wasn't finished. Upon finishing up the first course, what does she ask for but MILK. The girl is a bottomless pit!

We decided that last Monday would be a good day for an upside-down picnic-- a spread of food which could be found by looking up, rather than strewn about on the ground human-style. Since free-living chimpanzees must use their ingenuity to gather their daily meals, it is common for caregivers at CHCI to include an element of foraging in the chimpanzees' daily enrichment. This encourages the chimpanzees to interact with their environment and to use their problem-solving skills to procure those hard-to-reach treats.

 

This was the goal of Upside-Down Picnic Day--to have a theme day revolve around the idea of searching, finding, and figuring out how to get at the dried fruits (a favorite snack) hidden inside a variety of containers and contraptions. To turn this puzzling picnic upside down, we hung the containers from curtains of torn sheets around the outdoor enclosure so that the chimpanzees would have to climb and reach for the prize, like they would if foraging for fruit in a forest environment.

 

Some of the containers consisted of:

    * A variety of plastic boxes, bottles, and other containers requiring different techniques to open (an alternative strategy would be to rip the container open)
    * Odd shapes of taped-together paper towel and toilet paper rolls which required shaking in a particular way for the fruit to come out (alternative strategy: rip it open)
    * Small paper rolls containing fruit tied to yarn. Pull the yarn to get the fruit. (alternative strategy...)
    * A narrow-mouthed bottle filled with large pieces of re-hydrated fruit, with a plastic hook included to "fish" it out.
    * Containers in containers

 

Setting up for the picnic was a team effort, taking five people about 45 minutes to stash and hang the containers, in addition to the chimpanzees' regular daily enrichment items. However, the time spent was well worth it, as Tatu, Dar and Loulis seemed immediately interested in the picnic, each one picking a different direction and individually working on the foraging challenge of their chosen area. Dar quickly found a treasure trove of ants-on-a-stick (raisins on spaghetti) and a plastic container with dried fruit stashed in shredded paper. He took these over to a favorite spot on the upper ledge, and we saw a contented face as he enjoyed the spoils. Loulis, at first beginning to display towards we humans in the observation area, became suddenly distracted by a paper roll suction-cupped to the observation window and from then on seemed to forget what he was displaying about. The adventurous Tatu, however, probably got the largest share of treats--she seemed to barely stop moving as she walked, climbed and swung around most of the enclosure, cleaning out container after container as she went.

 

Although it seemed that the chimpanzees often chose the alternative strategy for opening the contraptions and containers (ripping apart even the hardest plastic!), we saw some containers being opened the "human" way, and saw Tatu successfully shaking fruit out of the paper towel rolls as well as pulling the yarn on the yarn rolls. At the end of the day, we were assured by those that cleaned the outdoor enclosure that not a container went unopened, meaning Dar, Tatu and Loulis were certainly very busy at the Upside-Down Picnic!

The summer apprentices have descended upon the Chimpanzee and Human Communication Institute once again, and the past few weeks have been a tempest of work, training, and research. In the afternoons the whole building transforms into a swarming mass of people, working on projects and data collection. In the slow hours of the afternoon routine, there is no television that isn't playing archive videos for data collection, no computer that doesn't have someone entering data into spreadsheets.

But data collection isn't all that's been getting done with all the new helping hands. The enrichment room has finally been organized, the berm garden is looking lush and beautiful, and the morning routine gets completed in record time.

Thank you to all of the 2009 apprentices for your dedication and hard work!

I applaud the apprentices who were here this past summer for their productive creativity. They produced various enhanced enrichment for the chimpanzees that were very well themed. Some of these included cocoon day, theater day, pirate day, Truman Capote day, camping day, dream day, Diamondback day, and even more. Some really unique ones included NASA day and Under the Sea day. One particular apprentice went above and beyond to make NASA day occur, buying numerous space toys and creating her own laminates including a laminated book of pictures. She even created her own space ship and rockets from cardboard.

Under the Sea day was collaboration between a few students who created enhanced enrichment in the chimps night enclosure. Besides cardboard cutout fish, plastic blow-up orcas, and creatively constructed sea creatures, there were glow-in-the-dark plastic pieces hung just outside the kitchen to give a nice ambiance to the enclosure.

 

Just after the apprentices left, another much-awaited enrichment day occurred, Moo Cow Day. Paper mache cows were constructed along with a barn and numerous cow related laminates, a calendar, pillows, and stuffed animals. Dinner was also themed. Two students, who were actually vegans and have never cooked meat before, prepared hamburgers for the chimps. This followed with a healthy serving of milk (well, soymilk, but close enough).

Overall, the summer was a great success with interesting and fun filled enrichment days that will be great examples for upcoming students.

Primates of both the ape and human kind abound at the CHCI. While the chimpanzees remain safely in their rooms and the outdoor area, the CHCI hallways teem with staff, interns, docents, graduate students and fourteen usually disoriented apprentices. As the newbies, we apprentices must learn the names, faces and identities of all primates on the premises, a daunting task indeed with two Andreas, Andy, Anne, Anna, Audrey, Austin, a Debbie, a Debbi, Dani, Jason, Jamie, Julie, Jacqueline, Karla, Katie, Kelly, Kevin, Lani, Lindsay, Lisa, Lynn, Martha, Mary, Mary Lee, Maureen, Michael and one Rozsika to name just a few. For the life of me, I cannot tell Cristy and Kelly apart.

Not only do apprentices find acknowledging the humans difficult, identifying primates with hairy bodies is no simple undertaking either. In person, the three resident chimpanzees are easily recognizable. Unfortunately, our ID assessments, and a good bit of our data collection involves video archives of the entire chimpanzee family, including the late Washoe and Moja. Those five dark, blurry, flurrying doppelgängers seem indistinguishable to our unpracticed eyes.

Scientific research demands exactness, and apprentices must be precise in our recordings of chimpanzees and behaviors. We study hours of videos to ascertain which primate is which, what behavior is what, so we may successfully pass the dreaded "Chimp ID" and "Taxonomy" tests. A taxonomy is analogous to a dictionary of interactions and behaviors. Chimpanzee interactions are classified by their contexts (such as play, greeting, grooming or agonistic) and their most frequent accompanying behaviors, facial expressions, postures, arousal levels, and vocalizations. The CHCI Taxonomy lists more than 200 individual entries plus illustrations and photographs. Apprentices must know the difference between a head nod and a bob as well as the dissimilarities of hold, grasp and a cling, or whether a bite is agonistic, a grooming behavior or play game. When a chimpanzee "grins" he is not happy, but when his face is neutral, he may be relaxed or just contemplating his next move. Oh, that fist bump the Obamas did--that's called a dab.

[Editor's note: The grin that Audrey refers to is the "smile" we so often see from chimpanzees on television, in the movies, and on birthday cards--this is a fear grimace and an expression of fear and stress.]

While I aced my taxonomy test, I, mortified, failed at chimp identification. Austin, an undergraduate student who also once struggled with a chimpanzee identity crisis, offered some pointers to those of us shamefully less astute. Thanks to him we all passed the second round of chimp id exams.

Here are some quick tips to help you "name that primate" at CHCI:

First, it's helpful to tell the males from the females, so check out backsides. Females have pronounced genital swellings.

Washoe not only was the matriarch of the CHCI clan, she definitely was the "Big Mama" of the family. With a huge female swelling and a well-defined middle-aged female "pear" shape, she was easy to spot.

Moja always loved to wear clothes, especially in her favorite shades of red or pink. However, those wily CHCI staffers never include video clips with those haute couture giveaways in the assessments. So, apprentices looked for her very straight limbs during quadrupedal movement and a big balding patch on the back of her head.

Tatu, a petite lady, sports a full white beard, arched posture and bent hands of an oldster but is agile and calculating. She enjoys tricking apprentices on the berm by sneaking out of sight while we file out our field logs. She frequently signs CHEESE/, a favorite treat along with just about anything else made from milk.

Dar, known as the gentle giant, is the largest of the group. His gray back, floppy ears and freckled Jimmy Durante face usually makes him fairly easy to recognize. He enjoys reading books and magazines about mechanical things. He tends to be laid back, or shy, will display to visitors initially, then go back up to meditate on a terrace or hammock.

Loulis, Washoe's pampered son, plays his princely role well. He's much smaller than Dar, and the ridges on his forehead are one of his most observable features. He's the most gregarious of the chimpanzees, quick to engage in anything social with chimpanzees or humans--friends or strangers. He is also the most likely to display and threaten--again with friends or strangers--though sometimes it appears that he's doing so for the sheer enjoyment of it. While his mother Washoe loved shoes as much as any Sex in the City gal, Loulis seems to enjoy feet without shoes, and signs HURRY/ for us to bare our tootsies.