Heartwarming footage reveals second chimp gazes in awe at open sky

By Charlie Herbert

She had spent her complete life in a cage

That is the second a chimp who had spent her complete life caged up noticed the open sky for the primary time.

Vanilla the chimp had been raised as a part of an animal testing programme at New York’s Laboratory for Experimental Medication and Surgical procedure in Primates (LEMSIP).

LEMSIP as soon as housed lots of of chimps and monkeys in terrible circumstances earlier than it closed in 1996. Vanilla had been a sufferer on the facility within the two years earlier than its closure.

She was then moved to the Wildlife Waystation in California, a a lot bigger enclosure. However right here she was nonetheless in a “chain-link fence cage with no grass and little or no enrichment.”

Credit score: Save the Chimps

Her Save the Chimps profile reads: “I spent my early years in a biomedical analysis laboratory in New York the place chimpanzees have been generally housed in 5’x5’x7’ cages suspended from the bottom like fowl cages.

“I used to be amongst thirty chimpanzees to be despatched to the Wildlife Waystation in 1995 the place I joined a small household group.”

In 2019, the Wildlife Waystation went out of enterprise although, that means that Vanilla needed to be relocated once more, together with 42 different chimps.

Credit score: Save the Chimps

She ended up being among the many closing seven to be re-home, however because of the FedEx Cares program she was flown throughout the US to a sanctuary in Fort Pierce, Florida.

Her profile explains: “It took quite a lot of devoted folks to make our transfer to Florida doable and now I stay up for calling this my endlessly dwelling.”

Footage of Vanilla assembly seeing her new environment was shared, and reveals the 29-year-old chimp gazing up in awe on the sky as she explores her new environment.