Pan bloglodytes: The official blog of the Chimpanzee and Human Communication Institute

If you know someone who works or has worked at the Chimpanzee and Human Communication Institute, you may have heard the term “chimp care” before. This title is given to someone who has gone through extensive training to directly care for and interact with the chimpanzees who live at CHCI.

Our first priority at CHCI is the health and safety of the chimpanzee family. A human who is interested in participating in the care giving for this family has to be able to provide safe care and show commitment and dedication to the program and – more importantly – to the chimpanzees.

Everyone who works at CHCI has a great deal of commitment to the family, but individuals have different levels of training. Someone starting out as an intern in the back is first trained how to be a “clean and berm” person – someone who spends about 4 hours a week cleaning, taking notes on berm and performing miscellaneous tasks around the building like meal preparation and laundry. CHCI depends on the clean and berm individuals so much – without them we would be lost. Cleaners help make sure that the chimpanzees are given a clean and safe home everyday, and berm observers ensure the chimpanzees’ safety when they are in their outdoor enclosure. Clean and berm interns contribute a great deal of time and energy to all of the research that goes on at CHCI (helping code videos, entering sign logs, etc.)

But what are the other levels of training? Well, an ambitious clean and berm intern who is so inclined can start taking “sign reliability” tests for each of the chimpanzees. These are videos assembled by the technicians that are clips of the chimpanzees signing. To pass these tests (or rather, to be reliable) requires a score of 85 percent or higher – which can be pretty difficult at times. After a while, you learn that the chimpanzees all have unique accents to their signing, and they all have their own pace that they sign at. The tests are just a means of making sure all the caregivers are able to correctly identify the signs when conversing with the chimpanzees. Someone who has finished sign reliability may receive an invitation to begin chimp care training, although it is not guaranteed. Obviously, it’s important that the chimpanzees respond well to the person being considered. The person also must commit to at least 18 months and show a lot of hard work and dedication to caring for the chimpanzees. At that point, someone might be invited to chimp care training.

The training is different for everyone – but for all it is a rigorous process that prepares the interns for eventually interacting with the chimpanzees alone. On average (although, as stated before, it’s different for everyone) training takes about 4-6 months. The training experience has several different stages, which help transition the caregivers into a position where they can make safe and flexible decisions on their own.

The first stage is strictly observational. For three meals, a new chimp care trainee watches a trainer, who is always a hydraulic operator (a chimpanzee caregiver with even more training and responsibilities) to see how the meal is served. The trainer shows the trainee how to serve different aspects of the meal, talks about the basic routine of every meal, and instructs on the importance of safety. No one at CHCI ever enters an enclosure, and we never stick our fingers through the fencing, but we can still have very rich and direct interactions. The trainer guides the trainee on how to do that safely. The next stage is assisting, and this is when the trainee will help the trainer on serving and interactions. Everything is done in way that our fingers never penetrate the caging and our feet never step into what we call a “red zone,” which is simply a visual reminder of how far the chimpanzees can reach out of certain areas under the fencing. A trainee who has assisted several times and is ready for the next step gets moved to the stage where the trainer observes them. This stage is pretty strange for the trainee because up until this point, an experienced trainer has been by stuck to their side like glue and now the trainer will sit back and just watch. During the observed stage the trainer is there to answer any questions and help with any high arousal meals or new interactions.

Finally, when the trainee is ready, they get moved to serving alone – but not completely at first. The trainer will sit in the kitchen, remaining close by if the server has any questions but not directly observing the server at all times as was previously done. After a few weeks at this stage, the server can be moved to having the trainer in the building – which means that the trainer can be anywhere in the building, not necessarily in the kitchen. It also means that the trainee can enter the human cages for interactions without being accompanied by a trainer. I can relay from a recent personal experience – it’s very weird! Once individuals have been moved to this stage, they start signing up for their weekend shifts and can finally complete their training.

A fully trained chimp care person still has all the responsibilities of a clean and berm person, but in addition they directly care for, interact with, and serve meals for the three amazing and unique chimpanzees living at CHCI. Each meal the chimpanzees are first offered CRACKERS or protein biscuits as their first course. The second course is the main meal – which is fruit-based for breakfast, protein-based for lunch, and carbohydrate-based for dinner. Crackers are small, and can be served either through the caging or underneath the caging. The chimpanzees have prehensile lips, meaning that they can grab things through their caging with just their lips, and this way the servers never put their hands through the caging. Vitamins are also served this way (or underneath the caging to the chimpanzees’ hand if that is what they prefer). Fruit smoothies, which are a breakfast item, are served in a cup that has a pouring lip, and the server will pour the smoothie into the chimpanzee’s mouth at the speed each family member desires. Fresh fruit is served to their mouths through the caging or to their hands underneath the caging. Lunch and dinner are usually served in bowls or on plates, and the chimpanzees are given spoons to eat with if they want. Lunch is a bean-based blended soup and sometimes meat, accompanied by a vegetable of the chimpanzees’ request. Bowls are passed to the chimpanzees below the caging, in a manner that the server doesn’t allow their hands to cross the red zone. Dinner is always different, and is usually served in bowls or sometimes in plates depending on what the meal might be. Dinner is also a time for fiber, which can be given in tablet form, Popsicle form, or mixed in a sport drink (the latter is a huge favorite!). Blankets always follow the meal as well as some nighttime enrichment. Sometimes the chimpanzees may ask for TOOTHBRUSH or GUM which can also be offered the same way as fruit or vegetable through the caging.

Interactions are a time for several different enriching games, conversations, and imagination. Chase is a big hit with the boys, and involves lots of stomping, slapping, and play faces. Tug-o-war can be played with a hose (the strong chimpanzees give us weak humans a little break) through the caging, and putting a mask on to entertain the chimpanzees is another popular game. Tatu will often ask for SMELL and she almost always correctly identifies what we have just eaten based on the smell of our breaths. Loulis loves to play tickle, where he puts his fingers out and tickles the back of our hands (our fingers form a fist and never penetrate the cage) or our shoes. Dar loves to be groomed by pushing his back against the caging so that his hair sticks out a bit and then we can brush him with a hair brush or backscratcher. We can also flip through magazines and talk about the pictures, we can make paintings together, and the list goes on.

Every human who works and volunteers at CHCI – be it a clean and berm person, chimp care person, hydraulic operator, tech, liaison, or docent – show a huge amount of dedication and caring for this family of primates. I thank you all so much for everything you do for this family! And I encourage others to come to Ellensburg and join our program – apprentices, interns, graduate students, or docents – and learn how unique this family is.

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You might wonder, “Where do the chimpanzees go at night?” Good question! The chimpanzees have night enclosures, a series of four rooms connected by doors and tunnels, where they are invited in for their meals and to sleep at night. If you have visited CHCI during a Chimposium and remember the East and West Rooms, the night enclosures run the length of these rooms, but behind the walls that you see during the Chimposium. A person who goes through very intensive safety training operates hydraulic doors which they open for the chimpanzees to move from one area to the next. Humans are never in the same area with the chimpanzees at the same time.

If one of the chimpanzees chooses not to come in for dinner after being invited in, that’s fine; they don’t have to come in if they don’t want to. In that case, someone would stay up on the berm until it gets dark or all the chimpanzees are in, whichever comes first. Even after dark, if one of the family members is still outside, a human stays in the building with them, all night long, to make sure everyone is safe.

Let’s assume that everyone has come in for dinner, maybe something like oatmeal with onions (Washoe’s favorite) or plain white rice (Loulis’s favorite). Once everyone is safely inside the night enclosures and is enjoying their meal, humans enter their playrooms and the outdoor enclosure (the spaces you might remember from a Chimposium) to begin cleaning.

We begin by removing all of the enrichment items from the rooms. Every paper product including magazines, drawing paper, and cardboard gets thrown away at the end of each day. Every piece of clothing, all the sheets, and each stuffed animal gets laundered with bleach. All the other enrichment items, toys, purses, shoes, laminated photos, balls, and so on, gets thoroughly washed and sprayed with a very strong disinfectant.

Each of the rooms gets cleaned with high pressure hot water, is sprayed with disinfectant, rinsed again, and then squeegeed dry.

While cleaning is going on, the server continues to serve the chimpanzees their dinner, perhaps accompanying the oatmeal with a tasty tomato or cucumber. The server then gives the chimpanzees their night-time enrichment, small or slender items — like hoses, small toys, laminates, magazines, masks, and so on — anything that can fit through the gaps in the woven-wire fencing, or through the slots beneath the fencing where the chimpanzees are served their meals. The server also provides a burlap sack and two blankets for each chimpanzee to make a nest for the night. Chimpanzees in free-living situations have been observed to make a new nest every night (weaving them from leaves, branches, and the like), so Washoe, Loulis, Tatu and Dar are given the option to do the same thing.

Once cleaning is over, the enclosures are securely locked, and the meal server and other caregivers say their goodnights to the chimpanzees. We’ll return again the next morning to start another day at CHCI.

You can definitely see why it takes a lot of hard-working volunteers to keep Washoe’s family enriched, safe, and healthy!

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While passing the Chimpanzee and Human Communication Institute on your summer stroll, you might think you see a human standing behind the fenced area around the outdoor enclosure. No, you’re not seeing things; that really is a human there.

Between the fencing of the chimpanzees’ enclosure and fencing that borders the facility is an area that we call the “berm.” The berm is a barrier between the chimpanzees’ home and the public. One of the main purposes of that human is to enforce the barrier. To ensure everyone’s safety, no human at CHCI ever enters the enclosures with the chimpanzees. One of the reasons for this is the chimpanzees’ strength. Full grown chimpanzees are 8-10 times stronger than an adult human male and they can bite through bone. The person working on the berm helps to maintain the separation between humans and chimpanzees, ensuring that the public does not encroach on the chimpanzees’ area, and keeping both the chimpanzees and the public safe.

A caregiver will be “up on berm” whenever the chimpanzees have access to their outdoor area. We strive to give the chimpanzees as much choice in their lives as possible, and we like to keep the outdoor area available as a choice as often as we can. This means that, whether it’s 100 degrees and full sun, or 25 degrees with wind-blown snow, someone is always up on the berm. When the weather is good, we usually take 30-minute shifts (which can sometimes become hour or hour-and-a-half long when we’ve a skeleton crew on weekends). When it’s extremely cold or extremely hot, we try to shorten the shifts to 20 minutes or so.

The berm at CHCI is a pretty wide area that allows for both a gravel path for a human caregiver to walk on and a garden full of yummy vegetables, plants, and flowers for the chimpanzees to enjoy. If the berm person has undergone the extensive training required to safely interact with the chimpanzees, he or she can provide enrichment for the chimpanzees by playing games, or conversing about the day, about the activity inside and outside the chimpanzees’ area, or about the garden. Sometimes, the chimpanzees might even convince a caregiver to give them some tasty ONION GRASS (the chimpanzees’ sign for chives).

Most of the time, you’ll see the berm person holding a clipboard. They are adding to the longest running observational log of chimpanzee behavior at CHCI, what we call the “Field Log.” It is the compilation of notes taken during the day, every day, for the last 14 years.

Since the berm person is trying to capture all the activities and behaviors of the chimpanzees, it’s quickest to write in abbreviations. We also have the enclosure divided into eight different “zones” for easier location identification. An example of an everyday berm experience might look something like this in the field log notes:

2:30 New D = DM

     W SU OWPF Z4

     TA LD OTERR BEL LDG Z5

     L SU ICS Z8 OT LT OUT

2:32 DAR QPW out A

     DAR QPW Z2 OT Z4

     DAR CLB OWPF Z4

     DAR SU OWPF Z4

2:34 DAR SWG OFH Z4 OT LDG Z6

     DAR SU OLDG Z6 OT LT OUT

2:37 L BRH OCC Z8 OT Z4

     W HUG-LOVExB/ OT LT L

     L SU OWPF Z4 BS W

     W GR L

Which roughly translates to: “A new data collector (DM) came up on to the berm at 2:30 p.m. At that time, Washoe was sitting up on the wooden platform in the middle of the enclosure, in Zone 4. Tatu was lying down on the terrace in Zone 5, directly below the cement ledge. Loulis was sitting up in the climbing structure (called the “shaky tree”) oriented toward and looking toward the area outside the enclosure. Two minutes later, at 2:32, Dar came out and walked quadrupedally from Zone 2 to the wooden platform in Zone 4, which he then sat up on. Another couple of minutes went by before Dar got up and swung on a fire hose from the wooden platform to the cement ledge of Zone 6, where he then sat up and was oriented toward and looking toward outside. At 2:37, Loulis brachiated (fancy word for swinging one hand after another) on the cage ceiling from Zone 8 to the wooden platform in Zone 4. As Loulis was approaching, Washoe signed HUG-LOVE/ repeatedly with both of her hands oriented toward him. Loulis then sat beside Washoe and she proceeded to groom him.

Again, this is just an example, but you can definitely get an idea of why we use abbreviations!

Studying field records (like the hypothetical example above) from 2001 and 2002, student and faculty scholars at CHCI we able to determine that the chimpanzees spent more time each day in the outdoor area when it was warmer outside than when it was colder (Puffer, Jensvold, Fouts, & Fouts, 2006). However, the research also showed that the chimpanzees spent at least a portion of every single day outside, when we were able to provide them access (we only had to close off the outside area for eight days out of the 365-day period studied). No matter whether Ellensburg is providing rain, snow, wind, clouds, or sunshine, the chimpanzees will trek their way outside. Our philosophy focuses on meeting the needs of the chimpanzees, and allowing them access to the outside enclosure during any weather is just one thing we do to make CHCI an enriching home for Washoe and her family.

So the next time you are walking around north campus and pass our building, you can certainly imagine one of us up there, taking notes, maybe haggling with Tatu over some ONION GRASS, and always protecting the unique chimpanzee family that calls CHCI home.

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