A 28-year-old chimpanzee who spent her entire life in a cage has seen the open sky for the first time at her new 3-acre (1.2-hectare) sanctuary home in Florida.
Vanilla was born in captivity and spent her first two years of life in a 5-foot- (1.5-meter-) square suspended cage at New York’s former biomedical research lab, the Laboratory for Experimental Medicine and Surgery in Primates (LEMSIP), which was closed in the mid-1990s. She knew nothing of soft grass, or the sky above, until late 2022 when she arrived at her forever home—Save the Chimps (STC) sanctuary in Fort Pierce, Florida.
Thankfully, she settled in quickly, despite her massive ordeal.
When Vanilla took her first steps into the outdoors, STC staffers were there to catch the magic moment on camera.
The shy chimp left her enclosure slowly, “awestruck” to see the open sky for the first time. Sensing her trepidation, a chimp named Dwight approached first to offer his new housemate a hug to calm her nerves, and Vanilla leapt into his arms. The pair have since become firm friends.
“[She] has a particularly playful relationship with the alpha male, Dwight, from whom she steals food,” STC told The Epoch Times in a statement, adding that Vanilla’s very favorite snacks are kiwis and carrots.
Vanilla, who was rescued alongside her sister, Shake, is integrating with 18 other chimps at one of the sanctuary’s 12 “chimp island communities,” each surrounded by water, meaning there’s no need for fences. Vanilla has made light work of investigating her new home; when she’s not exploring the island, she can usually be found perched on top of a three-story climbing platform “surveying her new world,” sanctuary staffers said.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuJTam2-zoU
The footage of Vanilla’s first glimpse of open sky was shared at the American Society of Primatologists’ June symposium in Reno, Nevada, by STC’s primatologist, Dr. Andrew Halloran. Dr. Halloran was the man responsible for choosing Vanilla’s ideal island home by assessing her personality and needs after the chimp left quarantine.
At LEMSIP, the resident chimps were kept in small cages hanging from the ceiling, and they had no contact with each other, according to the Daily Mail. When discarded by the lab in 1995, Vanilla and her sister were transferred to Wildlife Waystation in Sylmar, California, where they joined a small family group.
Vanilla lived with these chimps inside a garage-sized chain-link fence cage with “no grass and very little enrichment,” STC said in a statement. When the Waystation closed forever in 2019, Vanilla, her sister, and seven other chimps were taken to a safe facility before finding their forever home with STC in 2022.
A publicly-funded nonprofit, STC provides sanctuary to 226 chimps that have survived labs, the entertainment industry, the exotic pet trade, and roadside zoos. Many were kept in cages alone and had “never interacted with other chimps before.”
In her new home under the warm Florida sun, Vanilla has another 30 to 40 years of happy, healthy life ahead of her, and the smile on her face says it all.
