| a chimpanzee sanctuary - un sanctuaire pour chimpanzés |
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Gallery |
Hey Hey We’re the Monkeys…and yes we monkey around. My name is Sophie and I’m basically the matriarch of the monkey house. Now the chimps are always getting upset when people refer to them as monkeys instead of Great Apes. Well, I’m here to tell you that it is just GREAT being a monkey. Yeah, we have tails, so we can balance much better than those so-called Great Apes and it helps up swing from tree to tree and pick stuff up. We get around on all fours, so? We are agile, fast and just as clever! I even have opposable thumbs for goodness sake! I would like you to meet our monkey family. I’m the oldest and feistiest, if I do say so myself. I am a 29-year female white-faced capuchin. I was a pet and guess what? I didn’t make a good pet. Yep, I was incredibly cute as a baby, but can you imagine me living in a house? Come on people! I like to leap and swing and poop where I want, so I was rescued by a failing local animal shelter which was overrun with cats and dogs. The people who looked after us really cared, but our quality of life was not so hot. It was a noisy, smelly and crowded place. I had a new friend though, a male white-faced capuchin named Little Man (Petit Homme). We learned French as a Second Language and now we understand English, too. Little Man is 31 years old. Don’t get me wrong, Little Man is very handsome and quite charming, but I don’t have “those kinds” of feelings for him. We are more like siblings. I usually have to do all the grooming, but if something is amiss in the monkey house and I start squeaking out alarm calls, he backs me up instantly. Sometimes he gets particularly mad at stuffed animals and I just let him be. He came from a laboratory before we met at the animal shelter. He was used for blood pressure tests. I don’t know much more than that. He doesn’t like to talk about it much. He loves marshmallows and little slices of sweet red apples. He also likes to rub onion and hand cream over his tale and back. Personally, I’m fond of mints, cherries and red grapes. We both adore those little creamers you get with coffee. When Gloria adopted us we lived in her sunroom. It was nice, but we didn’t have much space. The wonderful Fauna crew renovated half of the llama barn into a spacious and bright home for us. We even had a big outdoor play area. Soon another monkey was going to come to live with us, Pougi, a crab eating macaque. But when, Theo, an olive baboon was coming to live with us from an Ontario University lab we would need even more space. The Fauna crew once again stepped up to the plate and made an even larger and brighter place for us all to live. It has huge windows that let the sun in and an amazing outside enclosure. This summer, our wonderful gardener, Anne Pelletier, designed a tropical garden just for us and it includes a beautiful, working waterfall. Class: Mammals
It is with great sadness that we announce the passing away of Little Man on December 3, 2007. He had been suffering from heart disease. |
Hi! It’s me Sophie again… The next to join our monkey troop was Pougi, a crab-eating or long-tailed macaque. He has a reputation for being grumpy, but he isn’t. He does love to poke people with his beautiful long tail, though. When all the humans are not around, he is pretty chill. I have seen him let long time animal caregiver, Karen Colwell, groom him at the end of the day. When no one is around and everything is quiet, he sticks his belly out against the cage or presses his face to the bars for a scratch. His eyes begin to droop and then close and he falls asleep for a few minutes, content in this special interaction. Like me, Pougi was also a pet and came to us from the SPCA when he was 8 years old. His “owner” gave him up because he was becoming aggressive. He was most likely smuggled from Asia. Macaques need space to climb, run and swing. In the wild they would travel many miles a day foraging for food. Pougi lived in Gloria’s sunroom at first, just like I did, but then moved to the renovated llama barn and now we all live together in the new and improved Monkey House. Pougi actually has access to the old home at the llama barn as well. He rambles along his long tunnel each morning to the other side, but always comes back before dinnertime! Pougi loves to eat. I have never seen him reject anything! He was quite a roly-poly guy for a while, with a cute Buddha belly. Lately he has lost some weight, probably caused by diabetes. Pougi and Theo, the olive baboon, appear to have bonded through the cages and make grooming noises and present their butts to one another in hopes for a grooming session. Because Theo is 3 times the size of Pougi and macaques and baboons don’t naturally live together, we have not allowed them to interact without the safety of bars. As much as they might enjoy each other’s company, it would be tragic if an injury were to occur. Class: Mammals   |
Stay tuned to learn about all our monkeys: Sophie (cinnamon Capuchin Pougi (crab eating macaque), Theo (olive baboon) and Darla and Newton (Rhesus macaques)