Soona being groomed by Zwala
First off, I would like to encourage everyone to vote every day in November to help get a large grant for the Center for Great Apes. They do such amazing work for captive chimpanzees and orangutans and this could really make a big difference to the male orangutans who need new enclosures as they grow up!
Much has been happening in Monarto Zoo's growing chimpanzee group-
The four female chimps from the Netherlands arrived in Adelaide in early October and after spending their quarantine period at Adelaide Zoo, they recently moved in to Monarto Zoo's chimp house. On Saturday they met the males and when I visited them all for they first time yesterday all eight were living together.
The chimps had access to two areas away from public viewing, so quite a bit of the time most of them were out the back where I couldn't see them, which is fair enough- they've had a lot going on recently! When I first got there, the chimps were all let into the main playroom so I was able to see all of them, it was quite strange seeing so many chimps as I was used to just the four males!
Zombi
I was able to tell the girls apart pretty quickly, Zombi, the oldest, is very large and masculine looking, Soona has large floppy ears, long hair and a bit of a belly, Zwala is small, with a dark, thin face, Galatea is almost as small as Zwala, with a pale chin and is very dainty.
Most of the time it was just Zwala and Zombi in the playroom, Galatea came in occasionally, and Soona came in even less often as she was busy spending time with the boys. Later in the day when the boys came back in to the playroom, Soona was right behind them and showed a lot of interest in Tsotsi, but gave him a bit of a slap at one point. When Tsotsi and Gombe were displaying, Soona didn't move out of the way straight away and tried to hold her own. At one point she displayed at Tsotsi a little bit!
Soona
Galatea made an impressive nest in the corner of the playroom floor with a couple of hessian sacks for extra comfort. Seeing this, Zombi came over and started making her own nest next to it. She then reached over and casually stole one of Galatea's sacks, and when Galatea walked off to fetch herself another one to replace it Zombi helped herself to Galatea's whole nest! Luckily for Galatea, she appears very good at nest construction and made in even bigger one filled with blankets very quickly. Galatea's ex-nest must not have been quite good enough for Zombi as she ended up moving a load of woodwool up next to Zwala, who had built her nest on top of the platform, and making a new one.
Galatea
When I did see Sandali, he was in the thick of things, at one point huddled up around a feeding toy with Galatea and Zombi. It was nice to see because Sandali does seem to spend a lot of his time alone. I hardly saw Boyd at all, but I could just see him in the off exhibit area grooming with Tsotsi. Tsotsi and Gombe came in a bit more often, and both of them displayed a bit. Gombe's display largely consisted of him swaggering around on two legs in an impressive manner.
Sandali
The females appear a lot more agile than the males, Zwala in particular seems to be quite the gymnast. She spent much of the afternoon having a snooze in her nest, but took an interest to the magazines that had food hidden inside. Zwala spent a long time leafing through the magazine, and then took it with her when she built a new nest- perhaps for reading in bed!
Zwala and her magazine
I had a lovely time watching the new girls, and of course the lovely boys. I should be going to visit them again next week which I am greatly looking forward to.
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