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

Live Music Capital of the World

Austin is a fabulous city. Although Austin has always been a fun town, it has grown exponentially in the past 15 years and is now the hip place to be. There is the SXSW music festival, the bats, Lady Bird’s Wildflower Center, Eeyore’s annual birthday party, Barton Springs pool, and Kirby Lane pancakes. Such was the inspiration for Texas Day.

My family sent t-shirts, hats, newspapers, magazines, cups, pom-poms (burnt orange & white, of course), maps, and laminates. Stickers included “Keep Austin Weird” (the campaign to preserve small, local businesses), and the Texas flag with the word ‘home’ on it. CHCI intern Lani Gusman made and painted cardboard cutouts of Texas, a guitar, and a cactus.

The Texas-Express special shipment also included cascarones, which are festive, hollow egg shells filled with confetti. They are a Mexican tradition at Easter. They are meant to be broken over someones head (usually as a surprise from behind), and this is said to bring the recipient good luck. Judging from the amount of confetti at clean up, these are some lucky chimpanzees! Dar was spotted carrying one around in his mouth.

Jessica Southwick (from the nearby, but not nearly as cool, state of Oklahoma) and I spray painted a giant Texas flag. To create a “hurricane,” we attached 2 white sheets from a hulahoop, strung it up in the shaky tree in East (thanks to Lisa Schuster Lyons), and twirled the sheets down to the floor. Tatu climbed to the top of the shaky tree, leaned way over, and peered into the eye of the storm.

All of the chimpanzees inspected their new enrichment items, and foraged for the bananas and grapes hidden around the room. The day was not complete without some Tex-Mex tacos (of corn, tomatoes, & chives) and salsa (courtesy of Rachel Halberg). Overall, Texas Day was a fun chimpanzee and human enrichment day. I’m hoping the next shipment includes some of those pancakes. Cheers, ya’ll!

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Editor’s Note: Every day at CHCI we put out a wide variety of enrichment items for the chimpanzees: clothing, sheets, drawing material, containers, toys, hoses, mirrors, brushes, and so on. Most days we have some sort of theme to the objects, which helps keep us from using the same objects in the same ways day after day. Other days we incorporate a forage or something else special into the general enrichment items, as well. Here are the themes from January 2008.

1. Tatu’s birthday

2. Tropical day

3. Back to school day

4. Horse and dinosaur day

5. General enrichment

6. General enrichment

7. Container day

8. General enrichment

9. Breakfast day

10. Seahawks day

11. Condiment (ketchup, mustard, etc.) handprints on the walls

12. General enrichment

13. General enrichment

14. Fairy tale day

15. Bird and feather day

16. Ant day (with scattered raisins as ants)

17. Insect day

18. Blue day

19. General enrichment

20. General enrichment

21. Martin Luther King Jr. Day

22. New movies day

23. Hanging laminates day

24. Mammal day

25. Jungle day

26. General enrichment

27. General enrichment

28. Ocean day (with Goldfish ® crackers)

29. All enrichment on the top wooden platform in the East Room

30. General enrichment

31. Press and seal forage day

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With all of the hype of the latest J.K. Rowling book and movie this past July, Lindsay and I thought the chimpanzees needed to be included in on this phenomenon, this prodigy, this boy named Harry Potter! With this idea formulated for our enhanced enrichment, we set out to realize a vision, to charter a journey into the magical world of Harry Potter. Armed only with our Harry Potter obsession and our imaginations we created an epic day, built with our very own muggle hands to bring the magic of Hogwarts to the chimpanzees.

The Chimpanzees would need broomsticks, obviously, to get around this mysterious world, we fashioned Nimbus 2000 Pan troglodytes models for their flying desires.

However, you can’t be a true wizard unless you have your trusty wand! These were provided for any spells they wished to cast. The wands had an applesauce snack hidden inside for their fun day.

In order to recreate the magic of Hogwarts, masterful portraits were hung on the walls and floating candles were suspended all around the grand room. With the Gryffindor emblem emblazoned on our banners and the heroic colors of maroon and gold adorning the enclosure, the East Room was transformed into a magnificent rendition of Hogwarts and the spirit it embodies.

Not only were there broomsticks, wands, portraits and floating candles, but there were snitches, witch hats, scarves, Harry Potter book covers, the whomping willow and fun laboratory experiments which resembled frozen fruit and water in the shape of cups.

But alas! One is never safe in the world of Harry Potter. Lo and behold a Basilisk had slithered its way into the east room and lay sulking in the shadows of the shaky tree ready to strike at any moment! But have no fear, Loulis and Dar promptly destroyed the shredded paper filled Basilisk before it could cause any harm.

With the danger now eliminated, Tatu dug into the candles in an earnest search to see what she could find, only to be showered with more shredded paper (of course she found 1 of the only 2 candles that did not have a marshmallow in it!). Discouraged temporarily, Tatu turned her attention to the yummy fruit hidden in ice. Meanwhile, Dar cast his frozen treat onto the ground in order to get at the fruit inside. Washoe calmly worked on her own fruit cup all the while.

Later in the day somebody found a marshmallow in the floating candles and the marshmallow frenzy began! Everybody was able to enjoy the fun food and enrichment of Harry Potter day. We feel that we were able to sufficiently recreate a magical world for the chimpanzees and include them in the Harry Potter craze. An epic day indeed!

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Music has been a part of my life since I can remember; I began playing the piano at age six, the trumpet at age ten, and the euphonium at fourteen. I was fascinated by the effect music had on me: it calmed me and excited me at the same time; it was a means to express myself that I had never explored.

We wanted to bring some of the magic of music to the chimpanzees – the excitement of sitting in an orchestra pit right before the concert begins, the feeling of awe a child has when he or she sees a musical instrument for the first time, the elegance that surrounds a night at the symphony.

The first step toward creating our “Night at the Symphony” at CHCI was selecting elegant clothes that the chimps could nest with during this special day. My mother had purchased glittery top hats for Dar and Loulis, and we selected two beautiful gowns from the enrichment room for Washoe and Tatu. These were set out on the tire in the East room, with artificial roses around them to simulate those thrown on stage by patrons at the symphony beckoning an encore.

Instruments came next, designed especially for the chimpanzees to interact with! Hallie and I constructed a harp out of cardboard and yarn: the frame was cardboard and the yarn (complete with dried apples tied in) formed the strings! This was put on the wall for the chimpanzees to discover during their morning forage. My father sent some PVC pipe from his workshop and we filled them with beaded necklaces (and a few slices of fresh oranges) to create shakers. To finish off the decorations and preparation, black and white streamers were tied all around the East room and music notes cut out of cardboard were taped all over the walls, wooden platform, and shaky tree!

The chimpanzees seemed to enjoy this day of enrichment thoroughly! Dar and Loulis headed straight for the harp with the dried apples and picked out each one, while Washoe and Tatu set to opening the shakers with the oranges inside. A few boxes of colored water were set around as well for added enrichment and Tatu managed to gather all of them for herself!

Hallie and I had so much fun bringing a magical “Night at the Symphony” to Washoe’s family – judging by the way Washoe and Tatu manipulated those shakers, we just might have some musicians on our hands!

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Thursday 26th July was Scotland Day at CHCI. For weeks I had been (and still am) amusing everyone with my Scottish accent and so I decided to give Washoe, Loulis, Tatu and Dar a taste of Scotland too. The East Room was decorated with all sorts of Scottish themed items: flags, a velcro map of Scotland, a big Celtic knot design, a (replica) golf-flag and tee and some brochures of the Scottish Borders (where I grew up).

I was very pleased to see that when Tatu settled down to leaf through the brochures she signed BLACK (which she uses like we might use “cool”). I will be passing on the message to all my friends at home.

Dar seemed to most enjoy the golfing area, lying back on the blanket and playing with the flag.

I also noticed him admiring the Scottish postcards along the window on which we had written messages wishing the family a fantastic summer and thanking them for their hospitality while I’ve been here.

Scotland day didn’t end there, for dinner we hand-crafted fantastic green Loch Ness monsters from rice, potatoes and onions.

I just hope everyone enjoyed Scotland day as much as I enjoyed preparing it.

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