Today, thanks to our good friends Chantal & Véronique, the boarders of J.A.C.K. were offered small plastic balls of different colours.
But before I tell you how the chimps reacted this morning when discovering their Valentine’ s enrichment, i have to mention that our two keepers, Eddy and Ngoy, were very very excited by the event since they were convinced the chimps would start playing socker! Hiding the little balls was a funny experience to our keepers who were building up socker stories in wich our chimp boarders were the main characters!
Finally, when the gates of the main group were opened, keeper Ngoy got extremely disappointed. He was expecting the dominant to collect the balls to play with but realised his built-up story had turned into the balls’ nightmare as Mwisho started peeling off the ball as if he were looking for a treat inside! Of course, the ball had a short life and once he had destroyed his toy, the alpha looked for another one! In this group, I dare say a ball’s lifetime is usually about 2 hours :(…
On the other hand, the nursery group usually has a totally different approachwith their toys: the youngsters know how to play and do keep the balls in good condition for a bit longer than the older chimps of our main group. The playing experts today were young Pasa and Tommy who loved to make the ball roll and roll, and roll, and roll…
The other nursery expert for balls is Elia. She is always extremely intrigued by new items of enrichment and is the first to find hidden things in the most unexpected places. Once the gates were opened, she saw the ball on top of the tree and she climbed immediately. Then, of course, she collected as many balls as possible and kept them preciously all day long; no other member of the group dared stealing them from her…
The other orphans of the nursery group had a good time as well :
Many thanks again to Véronique & Chantal for this special day – as you could see, the chimps had a particular Valentine today!!!
