In response to the overwhelmingly heartfelt comments in regards to yesterday’s somber repost from @michaelnicknichols 1989 photo of the captive chimp, Jo Jo – I decided to provide some current information in regards to lab tests on chimpanzees in the US today. I will also add some more information in my IG story with links to recent articles.
Overall, the status of laboratory testing in the US is positive in terms of an ethical and human standpoint. From the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service website:
In 2015, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dan Ashe today announced a final rule to classify all chimpanzees, both wild and captive, as endangered under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The rule uplists captive chimpanzees from threatened status to match that of wild chimpanzees and removes them from a special rule for primates that allowed some activities otherwise prohibited under the ESA.
“Extending captive chimpanzees the protections afforded their endangered cousins in the wild will ensure humane treatment and restrict commercial activities under the Endangered Species Act,” Ashe said. “The decision responds to growing threats to the species and aligns the chimpanzee’s status with existing legal requirements. Meanwhile, we will continue to work with range states to ensure the continued survival and recovery of chimpanzees in the wild.”
Learn more through my IG story and further at @nonhuman.rights.project feed Planet Earth
In response to the overwhelmingly heartfelt comments in regards to yesterday’s somber repost from @michaelnicknichols 1989 photo of the captive chimp, Jo Jo – I decided to provide some current information in regards to lab tests on chimpanzees in the US today. I will also add some more information in my IG story with links to recent articles.
Overall, the status of laboratory testing in the US is positive in terms of an ethical and human standpoint. From the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service website:
In 2015, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dan Ashe today announced a final rule to classify all chimpanzees, both wild and captive, as endangered under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The rule uplists captive chimpanzees from threatened status to match that of wild chimpanzees and removes them from a special rule for primates that allowed some activities otherwise prohibited under the ESA.
“Extending captive chimpanzees the protections afforded their endangered cousins in the wild will ensure humane treatment and restrict commercial activities under the Endangered Species Act,” Ashe said. “The decision responds to growing threats to the species and aligns the chimpanzee’s status with existing legal requirements. Meanwhile, we will continue to work with range states to ensure the continued survival and recovery of chimpanzees in the wild.”
Learn more through my IG story and further at @nonhuman.rights.project feed Planet Earth
In response to the overwhelmingly heartfelt comments in regards to yesterday’s somber repost from @michaelnicknichols 1989 photo of the captive chimp, Jo Jo – I decided to provide some current information in regards to lab tests on chimpanzees in the US today. I will also add some more information in my IG story with links to recent articles.
Overall, the status of laboratory testing in the US is positive in terms of an ethical and human standpoint. From the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service website:
In 2015, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dan Ashe today announced a final rule to classify all chimpanzees, both wild and captive, as endangered under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The rule uplists captive chimpanzees from threatened status to match that of wild chimpanzees and removes them from a special rule for primates that allowed some activities otherwise prohibited under the ESA.
“Extending captive chimpanzees the protections afforded their endangered cousins in the wild will ensure humane treatment and restrict commercial activities under the Endangered Species Act,” Ashe said. “The decision responds to growing threats to the species and aligns the chimpanzee’s status with existing legal requirements. Meanwhile, we will continue to work with range states to ensure the continued survival and recovery of chimpanzees in the wild.”
Learn more through my IG story and further at @nonhuman.rights.project feed Planet Earth
Mother and son feeding high in canopy of a fig tree in Uganda’s Kibale National Park. The female here is known as Mususu was roughly 40 at the time of this photo and her nursing son, Moon was 3. This community of wild chimps has been studied for ~40 years with every individual’s life history recorded in detail. This These massive figs belong to a Ficus capensis tree species and can provide weeks of ripened fruits for chimps to feed on.
Learn more about chimps in the current issue of @natgeo magazine, through my posts here and by following the conservation NGO @bulindichimps
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#chimpanzee #chimp #chimpanzees #chimps #ape #wildlife #conservation #animals #africa #uganda #bulindi #bulindichimps #wildlifephotography #nature #natgeo
Mother and son feeding high in canopy of a fig tree in Uganda’s Kibale National Park. The female here is known as Mususu was roughly 40 at the time of this photo and her nursing son, Moon was 3. This community of wild chimps has been studied for ~40 years with every individual’s life history recorded in detail. This These massive figs belong to a Ficus capensis tree species and can provide weeks of ripened fruits for chimps to feed on.
Learn more about chimps in the current issue of @natgeo magazine, through my posts here and by following the conservation NGO @bulindichimps
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#chimpanzee #chimp #chimpanzees #chimps #ape #wildlife #conservation #animals #africa #uganda #bulindi #bulindichimps #wildlifephotography #nature #natgeo
Mother and son feeding high in canopy of a fig tree in Uganda’s Kibale National Park. The female here is known as Mususu was roughly 40 at the time of this photo and her nursing son, Moon was 3. This community of wild chimps has been studied for ~40 years with every individual’s life history recorded in detail. This These massive figs belong to a Ficus capensis tree species and can provide weeks of ripened fruits for chimps to feed on.
Learn more about chimps in the current issue of @natgeo magazine, through my posts here and by following the conservation NGO @bulindichimps
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#chimpanzee #chimp #chimpanzees #chimps #ape #wildlife #conservation #animals #africa #uganda #bulindi #bulindichimps #wildlifephotography #nature #natgeo
Rosa and Betty sitting comfortably high in a fig tree in western Uganda. Rosa was an interesting female because she never left her natal community of wild chimpanzees. In order to maintain genetic diversity, the females will leave their family at puberty and go find another community of chimps where they’ll live out the rest of their lives.
I find it so fascinating that in such a social and bonded species like chimps that after 16 years the females will never see their family every again. It’s one of the least studied behaviors in wild chimps because it would require numerous neighboring communities of chimpanzees to be habituated/studied, which doesn’t exist yet.
Learn more about chimps in the current issue of @natgeo magazine, through my posts here and by following the conservation NGO @bulindichimps
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#chimpanzee #chimp #chimpanzees #chimps #ape #wildlife #conservation #animals #africa #uganda #wildlifephotography #nature #natgeo
Rosa and Betty sitting comfortably high in a fig tree in western Uganda. Rosa was an interesting female because she never left her natal community of wild chimpanzees. In order to maintain genetic diversity, the females will leave their family at puberty and go find another community of chimps where they’ll live out the rest of their lives.
I find it so fascinating that in such a social and bonded species like chimps that after 16 years the females will never see their family every again. It’s one of the least studied behaviors in wild chimps because it would require numerous neighboring communities of chimpanzees to be habituated/studied, which doesn’t exist yet.
Learn more about chimps in the current issue of @natgeo magazine, through my posts here and by following the conservation NGO @bulindichimps
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#chimpanzee #chimp #chimpanzees #chimps #ape #wildlife #conservation #animals #africa #uganda #wildlifephotography #nature #natgeo
Rosa and Betty sitting comfortably high in a fig tree in western Uganda. Rosa was an interesting female because she never left her natal community of wild chimpanzees. In order to maintain genetic diversity, the females will leave their family at puberty and go find another community of chimps where they’ll live out the rest of their lives.
I find it so fascinating that in such a social and bonded species like chimps that after 16 years the females will never see their family every again. It’s one of the least studied behaviors in wild chimps because it would require numerous neighboring communities of chimpanzees to be habituated/studied, which doesn’t exist yet.
Learn more about chimps in the current issue of @natgeo magazine, through my posts here and by following the conservation NGO @bulindichimps
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#chimpanzee #chimp #chimpanzees #chimps #ape #wildlife #conservation #animals #africa #uganda #wildlifephotography #nature #natgeo
Here is Moon and Mususu again, wild chimpanzees, having a little group feeding experience in a fig tree. This behavior is referenced in my previous post as ‘wadging’ and it’s basically the process of turning fruits into pulp; sucking the juice out and then discarding the dry remains of the fruit in a ‘wadge’. Moon is the 3 year old son to Mususu and he’s taking advantage of his mother’s strong chewing muscles. All apes, except humans, have a tall ridge on the top of their skull called a sagittal crest. This ridge of bone provides an attachment point for tendons which allow powerful jaw muscles greater leverage in chewing fibrous plant matter. Wild chimps can spend upwards of 8 hours chewing a day – something humans avoid by cooking our food and therefore we lost out sagittal crest over the evolutionary timescale.
Learn more about chimps in the current issue of @natgeo magazine, through my posts here and by following the conservation NGO @bulindichimps
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#chimpanzee #chimp #chimpanzees #chimps #ape #wildlife #conservation #animals #africa #uganda #bulindi #bulindichimps #wildlifephotography #nature #natgeo Uganda
Here is Moon and Mususu again, wild chimpanzees, having a little group feeding experience in a fig tree. This behavior is referenced in my previous post as ‘wadging’ and it’s basically the process of turning fruits into pulp; sucking the juice out and then discarding the dry remains of the fruit in a ‘wadge’. Moon is the 3 year old son to Mususu and he’s taking advantage of his mother’s strong chewing muscles. All apes, except humans, have a tall ridge on the top of their skull called a sagittal crest. This ridge of bone provides an attachment point for tendons which allow powerful jaw muscles greater leverage in chewing fibrous plant matter. Wild chimps can spend upwards of 8 hours chewing a day – something humans avoid by cooking our food and therefore we lost out sagittal crest over the evolutionary timescale.
Learn more about chimps in the current issue of @natgeo magazine, through my posts here and by following the conservation NGO @bulindichimps
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#chimpanzee #chimp #chimpanzees #chimps #ape #wildlife #conservation #animals #africa #uganda #bulindi #bulindichimps #wildlifephotography #nature #natgeo Uganda
Are those species most similar to humans fated for a future of strife amidst the modern world? Every great ape alive today has lost the majority of its habitat since the Industrial Age.
As I’ve been posting images and stories from my article with @davidquammen in the current issue of @natgeo magazine, consider these foundational images from @michaelnicknichols work from the late 1980s and 90s.
I remember @michaelnicknichols images of chimps in the midst of a vivisection procedure from the March 1992 cover story of National Geographic Magazine. I was 9 at the time and enthralled with the story: Apes and Humans – A Curious Kinship. @michaelnicknichols continued his work and published a book in 2005 under the original title: Brutal Kinship (published by Aperture).
Reposted from @michaelnicknichols // His name was Jo Jo, as a baby he was first used by humans to study how he did with sign language. I think he reached the proficiency equivalent to 3 year old human baby. The language study only had two years of funding so he ended up in the suburbs of NYC being tested for an HIV vaccine.
He would be given a shot of vaccine than challenged with a massive dose of HIV.
He did fine … for awhile, maybe even months or years.
Then he up and died of massive organ failure
When I saw him. From behind bars he was signing to the stranger “OUT”
Repeating over and over “OUT”
HIV study
Tuxedo, New York 1989
Transparency film
Brutal Kinship , GEO
Are those species most similar to humans fated for a future of strife amidst the modern world? Every great ape alive today has lost the majority of its habitat since the Industrial Age.
As I’ve been posting images and stories from my article with @davidquammen in the current issue of @natgeo magazine, consider these foundational images from @michaelnicknichols work from the late 1980s and 90s.
I remember @michaelnicknichols images of chimps in the midst of a vivisection procedure from the March 1992 cover story of National Geographic Magazine. I was 9 at the time and enthralled with the story: Apes and Humans – A Curious Kinship. @michaelnicknichols continued his work and published a book in 2005 under the original title: Brutal Kinship (published by Aperture).
Reposted from @michaelnicknichols // His name was Jo Jo, as a baby he was first used by humans to study how he did with sign language. I think he reached the proficiency equivalent to 3 year old human baby. The language study only had two years of funding so he ended up in the suburbs of NYC being tested for an HIV vaccine.
He would be given a shot of vaccine than challenged with a massive dose of HIV.
He did fine … for awhile, maybe even months or years.
Then he up and died of massive organ failure
When I saw him. From behind bars he was signing to the stranger “OUT”
Repeating over and over “OUT”
HIV study
Tuxedo, New York 1989
Transparency film
Brutal Kinship , GEO
Another quiet moment between Mususu and her son, Moon. At the time I took this photo, Mususu would have been ~40 years old and Moon was her 4th baby. Mususu was a northern female and I didn’t see her very much. She was shy. Within this wild chimpanzee community that I followed as a researcher in 2011, there were specific sub-groups of females that preferred to keep to a region within community’s territory. Some to the north or to the south and some kept to the center of the territory.
While the total number of chimpanzees in this community was 58 at the time, never in the history of the 40 year study did this group have all 58 members been the same place. Like humans, elephants, bats, and some whale species (to name a few), chimps are a fission-fusion society. Essentially this means that the social structure of chimps is dynamic. A large group of 30 comes together to feed on ripe figs, lets say, while other smaller groups of 4-8 chimps are a few miles away feeding on something else. It makes for very interesting days following chimps through their equatorial forest, you never know who will show up.
Learn more about chimps in the current issue of @natgeo magazine, through my posts here and by following the conservation NGO @bulindichimps
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#chimpanzee #chimp #chimpanzees #chimps #ape #wildlife #conservation #animals #africa #uganda #bulindi #bulindichimps #wildlifephotography #nature #natgeo Uganda
Another quiet moment between Mususu and her son, Moon. At the time I took this photo, Mususu would have been ~40 years old and Moon was her 4th baby. Mususu was a northern female and I didn’t see her very much. She was shy. Within this wild chimpanzee community that I followed as a researcher in 2011, there were specific sub-groups of females that preferred to keep to a region within community’s territory. Some to the north or to the south and some kept to the center of the territory.
While the total number of chimpanzees in this community was 58 at the time, never in the history of the 40 year study did this group have all 58 members been the same place. Like humans, elephants, bats, and some whale species (to name a few), chimps are a fission-fusion society. Essentially this means that the social structure of chimps is dynamic. A large group of 30 comes together to feed on ripe figs, lets say, while other smaller groups of 4-8 chimps are a few miles away feeding on something else. It makes for very interesting days following chimps through their equatorial forest, you never know who will show up.
Learn more about chimps in the current issue of @natgeo magazine, through my posts here and by following the conservation NGO @bulindichimps
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#chimpanzee #chimp #chimpanzees #chimps #ape #wildlife #conservation #animals #africa #uganda #bulindi #bulindichimps #wildlifephotography #nature #natgeo Uganda
Another quiet moment between Mususu and her son, Moon. At the time I took this photo, Mususu would have been ~40 years old and Moon was her 4th baby. Mususu was a northern female and I didn’t see her very much. She was shy. Within this wild chimpanzee community that I followed as a researcher in 2011, there were specific sub-groups of females that preferred to keep to a region within community’s territory. Some to the north or to the south and some kept to the center of the territory.
While the total number of chimpanzees in this community was 58 at the time, never in the history of the 40 year study did this group have all 58 members been the same place. Like humans, elephants, bats, and some whale species (to name a few), chimps are a fission-fusion society. Essentially this means that the social structure of chimps is dynamic. A large group of 30 comes together to feed on ripe figs, lets say, while other smaller groups of 4-8 chimps are a few miles away feeding on something else. It makes for very interesting days following chimps through their equatorial forest, you never know who will show up.
Learn more about chimps in the current issue of @natgeo magazine, through my posts here and by following the conservation NGO @bulindichimps
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#chimpanzee #chimp #chimpanzees #chimps #ape #wildlife #conservation #animals #africa #uganda #bulindi #bulindichimps #wildlifephotography #nature #natgeo Uganda
Reposting another of @michaelnicknichols emotional images related to his powerful body of work related to apes and humans. This is among Nichols’s most iconic images depicting a beautiful moment between @janegoodallinst and a captive chimpanzee.
@michaelnicknichols Jane first went to the Brazzville Zoo to see Gregoire in 1990, to check on the old hairless half blind chimp who had been caged since 1945. She encountered the much younger Jou Jou angry and throwing his own feces at visitors.
We would go back in 1994 to essentially rescue Gregoire, going into his cage after the door which had rusted shut was pried open. We went inside and the old man started “clicking” his lips with excitement. It may have been his first physical contact. Jane wore two shirts so he could un-button the first.
Gregoire would live out his live in a sanctuary with the company of young chimpanzees
Photo: 1
Jane with Jou Jou
Brazzaville , Congo, 1990
Transparency film
Apes and Humans, National Geographic
Photo: 2
Gregoire with Jane
Brazzaville, Congo 1994
Transparency film
Jane Goodall , National Geographic Congo-Brazzaville
Reposting another of @michaelnicknichols emotional images related to his powerful body of work related to apes and humans. This is among Nichols’s most iconic images depicting a beautiful moment between @janegoodallinst and a captive chimpanzee.
@michaelnicknichols Jane first went to the Brazzville Zoo to see Gregoire in 1990, to check on the old hairless half blind chimp who had been caged since 1945. She encountered the much younger Jou Jou angry and throwing his own feces at visitors.
We would go back in 1994 to essentially rescue Gregoire, going into his cage after the door which had rusted shut was pried open. We went inside and the old man started “clicking” his lips with excitement. It may have been his first physical contact. Jane wore two shirts so he could un-button the first.
Gregoire would live out his live in a sanctuary with the company of young chimpanzees
Photo: 1
Jane with Jou Jou
Brazzaville , Congo, 1990
Transparency film
Apes and Humans, National Geographic
Photo: 2
Gregoire with Jane
Brazzaville, Congo 1994
Transparency film
Jane Goodall , National Geographic Congo-Brazzaville
Reposting another of @michaelnicknichols emotional images related to his powerful body of work related to apes and humans. This is among Nichols’s most iconic images depicting a beautiful moment between @janegoodallinst and a captive chimpanzee.
@michaelnicknichols Jane first went to the Brazzville Zoo to see Gregoire in 1990, to check on the old hairless half blind chimp who had been caged since 1945. She encountered the much younger Jou Jou angry and throwing his own feces at visitors.
We would go back in 1994 to essentially rescue Gregoire, going into his cage after the door which had rusted shut was pried open. We went inside and the old man started “clicking” his lips with excitement. It may have been his first physical contact. Jane wore two shirts so he could un-button the first.
Gregoire would live out his live in a sanctuary with the company of young chimpanzees
Photo: 1
Jane with Jou Jou
Brazzaville , Congo, 1990
Transparency film
Apes and Humans, National Geographic
Photo: 2
Gregoire with Jane
Brazzaville, Congo 1994
Transparency film
Jane Goodall , National Geographic Congo-Brazzaville
Another intimate moment between Mususu and Moon – the same mother and son pair from my last post.
Here, 3 year Moon gently grasps his mother’s face as he nibbles a piece of pre-chewed figs that his mother had been mashing between her powerful jaws. What Mususu is doing is called ‘wadging’ and it’s basically the process of turning fruits into pulp; sucking the juice out and then discarding the dry remains of the fruit in a ‘wadge’. I will post a video of this came behavior tomorrow.
Chimps can spend upwards of 8 hours chewing a day – something humans avoid by cooking our food.
Learn more about chimps in the current issue of @natgeo magazine, through my posts here and by following the conservation NGO @bulindichimps
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#chimpanzee #chimp #chimpanzees #chimps #ape #wildlife #conservation #animals #africa #uganda #bulindi #bulindichimps #wildlifephotography #nature #natgeo Uganda
Another intimate moment between Mususu and Moon – the same mother and son pair from my last post.
Here, 3 year Moon gently grasps his mother’s face as he nibbles a piece of pre-chewed figs that his mother had been mashing between her powerful jaws. What Mususu is doing is called ‘wadging’ and it’s basically the process of turning fruits into pulp; sucking the juice out and then discarding the dry remains of the fruit in a ‘wadge’. I will post a video of this came behavior tomorrow.
Chimps can spend upwards of 8 hours chewing a day – something humans avoid by cooking our food.
Learn more about chimps in the current issue of @natgeo magazine, through my posts here and by following the conservation NGO @bulindichimps
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#chimpanzee #chimp #chimpanzees #chimps #ape #wildlife #conservation #animals #africa #uganda #bulindi #bulindichimps #wildlifephotography #nature #natgeo Uganda
Another intimate moment between Mususu and Moon – the same mother and son pair from my last post.
Here, 3 year Moon gently grasps his mother’s face as he nibbles a piece of pre-chewed figs that his mother had been mashing between her powerful jaws. What Mususu is doing is called ‘wadging’ and it’s basically the process of turning fruits into pulp; sucking the juice out and then discarding the dry remains of the fruit in a ‘wadge’. I will post a video of this came behavior tomorrow.
Chimps can spend upwards of 8 hours chewing a day – something humans avoid by cooking our food.
Learn more about chimps in the current issue of @natgeo magazine, through my posts here and by following the conservation NGO @bulindichimps
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#chimpanzee #chimp #chimpanzees #chimps #ape #wildlife #conservation #animals #africa #uganda #bulindi #bulindichimps #wildlifephotography #nature #natgeo Uganda
Text below by @davidquammen from our article in the current issue of National Geographic Magazine @natgeo. This article puts spotlight on a troubling theme across western Uganda where humans and chimpanzees are in competition for resources.
For more than three years after the trauma of her son’s abduction, Ntegeka Semata and her husband, Omuhereza Semata, a farmer, continued to live in their house. They built a bamboo fence around their tiny backyard, enclosing the cooking shed in what they hoped would be a safe zone for the family. “I am scared all the time that other chimpanzees might come back,” Ntegeka said in that earlier interview.
But the fence was flimsy, the chimps kept returning, and the Sematas felt under siege. Ntegeka couldn’t work in the garden. The children were sometimes too afraid to eat. Even their goat made piteous noises of fear. By the end of 2017, their house was vacant, with a broken window above the front door. The Sematas had fled and were living a marginalized existence in a rented room at a compound three miles away. They owned no farming land there. “I feel like we’ve been cast back into poverty,” she said.
Meanwhile the remaining windows of their old house reflected only the faces of chimpanzees, which visited regularly, glowering in, confused and provoked by the chimp images mirrored there, which seemed to be glowering out.
Learn more about chimps in the current issue of @natgeo magazine, through my posts here and by following the conservation NGO @bulindichimps
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#chimpanzee #chimp #chimpanzees #chimps #ape #wildlife #conservation #animals #africa #uganda #bulindi #bulindichimps #wildlifephotography #nature #natgeo
For those interested to learn more about what’s happening in western Uganda in regards to the competition for land and resources between humans and wild chimpanzees, please consider this book – Among Chimpanzees, by Dr. Nancy Merrick.
“In Nancy Merrick’s inspiring memoir the future of the apes is too precarious to leave to the professionals. Her story of how she became a lifelong activist for chimpanzee conservation is heart-rending, uplifting and ultimately important because it gives powerful evidence of her core conviction: one person really can make a difference.” —Richard Wrangham, co-director of the Kibale Chimpanzee Project, Professor of Biological Anthropology, Harvard University
Learn more about this challenging conservation story in the current issue of @natgeo magazine, through my posts here and by following the conservation NGO @bulindichimps that is working on the ground to implement solutions.
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#chimpanzee #chimp #chimpanzees #chimps #ape #wildlife #conservation #animals #africa #uganda #bulindi #bulindichimps #wildlifephotography #nature #natgeo
