Meet Fannin’s Newest Retirees – Chimpanzees

photo provided by Mike Seres

An exclusive gated-community, complete with high security features, is set to open off Lowery Road as soon as County Commissioners grant the retirees the opportunity to move to Fannin County.  (read “Commissioners Vote to Table Project Chimps’ Application to House 80 Chimpanzees in Fannin County”)

Right now the facility consists of three villas, one completely ready and two in different stages of construction.  Every two villas will share an open-air habitat enclosed by a high concrete wall.  The first villa, Cedar Tree Villa, is ready for residents.  Cedar Tree Villa was donated by Billy Joe Armstrong and his wife Adrienne.  Mr. Armstrong is in the band Green Day.   The kitchen was designed and donated by Rachael Ray, complete with an over-sized kitchen window, so both chimpanzees and volunteers can satisfy their curiosity about each other.

Overseeing the retirees’ social schedule is Mike Seres, Director of Chimpanzee Management.  FetchYourNews sat down with Mr. Seres to talk about how the chimpanzees will adjust to their new homes and to each other.

The chimpanzees will arrive in social groups of 8-10 over the next five years.  The chimpanzees within each group know each other, but they don’t know those in other groups.  At the beginning, the group will just get used to their new space.  Mr. Seres said it is just like when you move into a new house.  You have some sleepless nights at the beginning getting used to the new creaks.  And, you have to learn the faces of the new people that you see every day.  Some people accommodate to the new noise quickly, some take longer.  Some of the chimpanzees have not been outside before, so they will need time to become accustomed to new animal noise and new types of plants as well.  They also have to learn to trust the climbing safety of their structure.

After getting the residents settled, Mr. Seres will work on helping the residents know each other.  The chimpanzees know their companions inside their group, but don’t know the chimpanzees in another group.  It can take a few weeks or up to many months to build the chimpanzees into a larger social group.

Mr. Seres described the initial getting-to-know-you conversation which pretty much covers the same sub-topics as human conversations: namely, are you someone I can trust, are you someone who can hang out with my friends, are you someone who gets aggressive easily and how strong are you.  Upon first meeting, two chimpanzees start panting their get-to-know-you questions.  Chimpanzees use a range of panting noises to communicate with each other.  If the chimpanzees are getting along, then they start touching each other and maybe doing a bit of grooming.  When it seems like the two will get along, Mr. Seres leaves the crawl through door between them unlocked.  If a chimpanzee chooses to learn more, the chimpanzee can enter the other’s cage.

Mr. Seres provided the following video of two male chimpanzees, Bingo and Antoine, having a getting acquainted conversation.  The cage set-up is very similar to the area in Project Chimps where Mr. Seres will socialize the chimpanzees.

The chimpanzees are, in fact, retiring from a life of brutal work and living conditions at New Iberia Research Center (NIRC), owned by the University of Louisiana – Lafayette.  There the chimpanzees were used as subjects in biomedical tests.  FetchYourNews cannot confirm what tests they were used in since many of the tests were funded by pharmaceutical companies and the information is considered proprietary.

Chimpanzees and the other primates at NIRC were the subject of a 2009 undercover investigation led by the United States Humane Society (click here to read the United States Humane Society’s article and video about the investigation).  The United States Humane Society has given a substantial donation to Project Chimps to establish the sanctuary in Fannin County.

Findings from this investigation increased pressure on the National Institute of Health and the United States Department of Agriculture to stop permitting chimpanzees use in medical studies and it led to the US Fish and Wildlife Service classifying all US chimpanzees as endangered animals.

Mr. Seres said life as a research chimpanzee has traumatized the animals.  Part of his work will be reconnecting with chimpanzees with natural chimpanzee behavior.  For instance, NIRC housed male and female chimpanzees separately, so the chimpanzees don’t understand how to relate to a chimpanzee of the opposite sex.  Research work also broke up family bonds and group learning which is so important for chimpanzees to understand how to live in the world like a chimpanzee.  Babies were taken from their mothers, so they didn’t have a chance to experience mothering behavior.  As such, it is difficult for them to mother their babies appropriately.  Also, by being separated at an early age, the chimpanzees didn’t have the nuclear family bonds that form the basis of chimpanzee tribes, which can include around 100 individuals.  Mr. Seres said that, in the wild, chimpanzee groups have something like a pre-school.  The mothers and the older siblings help care for the younger ones, giving young chimpanzees plenty of supervised opportunities to learn about how to be a parent and a chimpanzee.

Some chimpanzees were kept in isolation cages at NIRC so that the particular study one chimp was involved in would not contaminate the research study of another chimp.  This means that some chimpanzees didn’t know that actual animals that looked like them existed.  Also, being kept in isolation meant that they did not have a chance to learn “words” and communication gestures from other chimpanzees.

FetchYourNews asked Mr. Seres how he creates the social interaction between the two incoming groups so that they will become one integrated group.

Mr. Seres said the first step is figuring out who the leader is.  When he makes the one-on-one introductions, he observes the character of each chimpanzee.  He is looking for the same things people want in a human leader: outgoing, one who shows more intelligence, and one who can make more complex communication gestures so he or she can relay the message to others.

One he has found his chief chimpanzee, he begins building the group, introduction by introduction.  He says that it is kind of like when a semi-stranger walks into a party – the partiers turn around to see the newcomer.  They start conversing among themselves about who the newcomer could be.  Then, they decide to send someone to check out the newcomer.  The chosen chimp moves over and starts asking questions by panting, as in the video.  After getting some information, the chimpanzee returns to the party.  The partiers discuss among themselves if they need some more answers before the newcomer joins.  If so, they send a messenger out again until the partiers are ready to welcome the newcomer in.  Mr. Seres said when a particular chimpanzee has been absent from a group for a while returns, the group members bombard the missing chimpanzee with questions to find out about the trip to the outside world.

Project Chimps will live video-stream Mr. Seres work while he introduces the chimpanzees to each other and builds a group.  There are plans to build an observation deck for visitors overlooking the open-air area at a later date.

The chimpanzees coming to Fannin County don’t belong to a particular species.  When North America and Europe were importing chimpanzees to use in research and for zoos, the importers/exporters didn’t segregate the different species. So, the four different species mated and created the mixed-species chimpanzees that research facilities use. Grown male chimpanzees  are almost 4 feet tall and weigh around 200 lbs..  They have about twice the strength of humans. Project Chimps’ chimpanzees range in age from one to 50; the lifespan of a chimpanzee in captivity is 40 to 60 years.

Mr. Seres is part of the “dream team” that Project Chimps President and CEO, Sarah Baeckler Davis created.  Before taking on Project Chimps, Ms. Baeckler Davis led the North American Primate Sanctuary Alliance.  In this position, she met people in the primate sanctuary community all over the world.  The sanctuaries knew that the 600 chimpanzees in United States’ research facilities would be retired within the next few years because of new laws prohibiting biomedical research on chimpanzees. Many of the chimpanzees would go to federally-funded sanctuaries, like Chimp Haven in Louisiana.  However, chimpanzees that were privately held, like those at NIRC, did not have a sanctuary to retire to.  That is when she began developing Project Chimps. Ms. Baeckler Davis said her previous position let her take a world-wide look at who is working in the sanctuary community and she was able to hand-pick who came on the project.  “I am really proud to lead them,” said Ms. Baeckler Davis.

Mr. Seres previous position was as “social director” at Kumamoto Sanctuary in Japan.  The chimpanzee population there is very similar to the one at Project Chimps.  The Kumamoto Sanctuary houses retired chimpanzees that were used in biomedical research in Japan.  His work there was to acclimate research chimps into life at a sanctuary.

The retirees, themselves, will be keeping a low profile in the Fannin community.  Project Chimps, though, will start an education program for area students and occasionally offer educational tours at the facility.  The organization has an education curriculum that they will teach high school students who will then teach it to younger children.  Also, volunteers will be able to help at the facility.  Volunteers will not come into direct contact with chimpanzees because it requires a strict physical and vaccinations.  In fact, eager supports have already been donating children’s toys to the organization.  The chimps will use the toys to stimulate their curiosity and tactile agility.  Ms. Baeckler Davis said that Project Chimps has been overwhelmed by support from the Fannin community.

Among the retirees are two nationally-known chimpanzees, Hercules and Leo.  The chimpanzees came to national attention in late 2013 when the Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP) sued the State University of New York Stony Brook over the captivity of Hercules and Leo and their use in body movement research.  The NhRP describes the research as “Stony Brook subjected them to frequent administrations of general anesthesia and thrust fine-wire electrodes into their muscles to conduct locomotion research… Leo’s heart once stopped while he was under anesthesia… Hercules still has not regained normal use of one of his legs.”

The Nonhuman Rights Project sued Stony Brook arguing that the chimpanzees are too cognitively and emotionally complex to be held in captivity and the court should send the chimpanzees to Save the Chimps sanctuary in Florida. The NhRP attempted to have Leo and Hercules covered under a writ of habeas corpus which is used to legally to bring a prisoner into court so that the court can decide if the person’s imprisonment is legal.  In July 2015, New York Supreme Court Justice Barbara Jaffe said that the two chimpanzees do not meet the legal definition of “person”.  However, her ruling also left open the changing definition of human. She stated that a “thing” doesn’t need to be “human” to be given personhood.  An example of this is the Citizens United case which allows corporations to be seen as individual humans in regards to campaign contributions. Judge Jaffe also spoke to the changing idea of what people are considered humans.  She stated that, “Not very long ago, only Caucasian male, property-owning citizens were entitled to the full panoply of legal rights under the United States Constitution.”

Currently Hercules and Leo are at the New Iberia Research Center in Louisiana, as are all the other chimpanzees who will come to Fannin County.  Ms. Baeckler Davis does not know when Hercules and Leo will arrive at Project Chimps.  The Nonhuman Rights Project want Hercules and Leo to go to Save the Chimps, a sanctuary in Florida.  When NhRP began representing Hercules and Leo, its goal was to get the chimpanzees immediately removed from Stony Brook to Save the Chimps.  Project Chimps did not exist at that time.

June 24th, Good Morning from the Office’s Brian Pritchard interviewed Ms. Baeckler Davis about life at Project Chimps for Fannin’s newest retirees.