this is the nature of things a first taste of freedom after a traumatic life in the laboratory these chimpanzees can now see open sky move freely touch another chimpanzee to show this no sharp line dividing us from the rest of the animal kingdom but they've been made to stand in for us in medical research now that's changing there's been an evolution in our thinking I had really no idea that by this point in time we would be discussing the retirement of chimpanzees it's a new beginning [Music] in the 1980s I met my first chimp he was part of a research program and I found it very unsettling as chimps are our closest living relatives now that family tie is being recognized in a bold move by the US government their research chimps will be retired so what happens when a lab chimp is retired this isn't the wilderness of Africa but it is home for Conan and his large family there are 25 members each one of them a complex individual they're fortunate to be here this is Chimp Haven tucked in a quiet corner of Louisiana it opened its doors in 2005 it's a special retirement home and the residents have come here after particularly demanding jobs more are on their way as the US National Institutes of Health starts the process of retiring its lab chimps chimp a van veterinarian dr. Raven Jackson is escorting a group of chimps to their new home I'm extremely excited now one of many trips that I've taken to transport chimpanzee from the research setting into defense or defense in each time I can't say that the excitement has diminished at all for dr. Jackson it's a turning point NIH s recent decision I'm now a part of history and this will be something that we'll be able to look back upon and even in my own personal life but I'll be able to look back upon and know that I was a part of making a difference in the lives of these champion be a quick pit stop to check on the chimps our DNA is almost identical to theirs meaning viruses can pass both ways the chimps are wary and watchful Sean all right luckily dr. Jackson can speak their language and knows how to break the ice [Laughter] part of our MO is that we say two months after arriving at Chimp Haven we get to see their true personality they know okay this is the routine this is where I'm going to be things are safe you'll learn too that these welcoming faces can be trusted but these chimps aren't ready for that yet they're on alert they don't recognize the people or the place chimps like humans are suspicious of change and these ones have every reason to be given their past you're doing good it's gonna be okay [Music] as he's unloaded Pepe strength five times that of a human adult male threatens to overwhelm the staff if he were sedated it would have been easier for them [Music] but the sanctuary avoids the trauma of sedation unless absolutely necessary once in their bedrooms the newcomers explore and settle in they'll spend two weeks here in quarantine [Music] [Music] there's no denying it's still captivity but these chimps couldn't survive in the wild here these highly social animals can easily interact and will live in large groups the hope is they can begin to forget their former lives in the lab but it won't happen overnight Shellington Coco we're rocking and that sometimes is a sign of stress they've had a lot going on today they're just meeting new people they're in a new area so I would expect to see things like that I was giving on a one to ten scale I say today was about a seven was young adult adult male of course you saw that you know that group strength that they have and it's a lot of comparative energy and effort in order to get them safely into their bedrooms and enclosure so now I can finally take a deep breath and know that it was successful their lives at Chimp Haven will be very different from what was once considered acceptable the secret of the flava for years chimpanzees have been a source of entertainment from ads 42 circus attractions [Music] they were our surrogates in space our crash test dummies chimpanzees were used in an effort to understand all aspects of human health most people didn't know how special they were but scientists believed that their bodies were good substitutes for ours it was around the same time that Jane Goodall made some startling discoveries her work revealed that traits we considered uniquely human we're anything but to her watching chimpanzees was like looking in a mirror but the scientific establishment wasn't interested in her approach for me it was the fact that the chimps are so like us and it's not just in the gestures and postures they use but they have their own individual personalities they can feel anger and fear and pain and when I got Cambridge in England to do a PhD I was told I done everything wrong I shouldn't have given the chimpanzees names they should have had numbers and I could not talk about them having personalities or minds capable of problem-solving and absolutely not emotions because those were unique to us good old allowed us to see chimps as individuals 50 years later the effort to identify chimpanzees continues with ethicist Laurie Grune and has taken on a whole new meaning this is Deena and this is pan these were two of the first fortune Pansy's that were in research labs in this country in the 1920s her interest in chimpanzee welfare led her to create the last 1000 chimps website it tracks captive chimpanzees zees who have been or still are used in biomedical research in the u.s. the last developed country to allow it the idea of the last 1000 was a way of taking an abstract notion that there are chimpanzees in laboratories and maybe we should end chimpanzee research and retire them the hope is to turn as many of the names on the last 1,000 sight green which means that they've been retired from the laboratory I think it's important to identify the chimpanzees by name both to honor and represent them as individuals and oftentimes to be able to identify and empathize with another is a central part of what moves people to action each chimpanzee who arrives at Chimp Haven is an individual a unique personality but to thrive they need to live with others just like wild chimps and us today for recent arrivals are coming out of quarantine over the next couple of days they're going to be introduced to complete strangers who will eventually become their family they all know that something's up before they meet their future family they're given time to become familiar with their new play area the chimps aren't the only ones with a sense of anticipation for females first little rose and star Christy waits for Queenie Latifah their first tentative steps into a place they've never been this is their moment in the Sun fresh breeze soft grass no bars to block their view simple pleasures denied for much of their lives they're in their 30s except for Queenie Latifah who is 45 and was taken from the wild at their age they probably endured the worst conditions of research labs coming ups are sold on these we have introductions are carefully planned distractions are delivered just before the first encounter outcome ladybird Phyllis penny and Sandy they've only been at Chimp Haven for a few months but they see this as their turf this is when the going could get rough but Chimp Haven co-founder and behaviorist Amy folks has managed over 200 of these first-time meetings the chimpanzees during the introduction did usually are very active at first especially the first ten minutes they have this big burst of energy and then things tend to settle down and then there's typically another outburst and that's pretty typical chimpanzee social groups all the way around [Applause] when you've over here these two chimps are greeting each other for the first time see the panting you see the lip touching that's positive and inspection all positive interaction but they're understandably cautious some of the chimpanzees have been isolated for long periods of time and that can really affect their ability to live in a chimpanzee family and often with those individuals we find that we have to take a slower approach complicated dynamics Amy and her staff watch for specific cues what I like to see in an intro is a lot of the friendly behavior so things like embracing or hugging chimps - behavior called mouthing where they put their mouths on somebody and a lot of times they'll pant when they do that and that will call a pleasure pant or a friendly pant and so those are good things that we like to see they like to see the chimpanzees reach out to each other - that's a very positive behavior not everyone adjusts to the open space it looks like Christy might be a wall Walker it's thought that former research chimps feel safe near concrete a familiar element from the lab the next day the delicate business of family building continues Harry and Julius come charging out [Applause] julius wastes no time establishing his rank as head of the group chimpanzees have what we call a dominance hierarchy and that typically in the wild there's one male who's what we call an alpha or he's the boss he's the one who's in charge and then the other males kind of follow after him and then the females are typically under all of the male chimpanzees can be devious not so different from us penny was mouthing Queenie Latifah's brow acting as if she was being friendly and then she turned around and bit Benny has led Queenie know who's running the show for Queenie it's been a jarring entry to a new life retirement has its challenges and it surprises not all the chimps here are senior citizens [Music] you [Music] today starts early for chimpanzees and the humans here don't have a lot of choice but to go along with it all right everyone has said so it makes room area where you want to get my food table no empty calories for the chimps the colony consumes about a hundred and twenty four thousand kilograms of greens per year Conan's family heads to breakfast it's a veritable traffic jam as the chimps moved from their bedrooms to their forest habitat this morning Lindsey Peters has the choice John feeding the boisterous groove so mostly what they get is greens and a lot of veggies as they get in the morning and they know that whenever everybody goes outside then they get the big reward like apples oranges bananas stuff like that Lindsey has been at Chimp Haven for five years so she knows the needs and temperaments of these chimpanzees commands the Alpha of the group Coenen moves a little slower because he has authoritah so he'll usually whenever they're all out here getting their food he'll usually do one big spurt to let him know that hey I'm the Alpha and then we usually feed him and he kind of calms down with 25 members Conan's family is the largest at Chimp Haven Conan's a proud papa to a few of the youngsters they weren't bred intentionally but Conan's vasectomies failed the oops babies as they're affectionately known I've given this elderly group a bit of get-up-and-go I played softball since I was five so it kind of comes in handy Lyndsey aims right for the little ones competition for the fruit is fierce now that she's over a year old gingers let Natalie kind of get off of her and she'll go forage for food as well so the babies are definitely learning from their moms how to get food and they don't get everything after a raucous morning Conan's group goes inside to escape the heat of the day well at least most of them do Amy folks takes the opportunity to walk through the forest to see what the chimps do when no one's watching this five hectare space lets the chimps experience life on the wild side chimpanzees in the wild things like termites and ants and bugs and we can see with this log where they've stripped the bark and it looks like they've been going after the ants or the grubs in this setting the chimpanzees do what comes naturally the earliest clues about chimpanzee culture came from Jane Goodall it was after months of watching chimps in the forests of Tanzania that she made one of the most important scientific observations of modern times it was really exciting for two reasons for me it was me it was in the fourth month of the study and I just saw this dark shape crouched over termite mound and a black hand reaching out and picking a blade of grass and it was obviously being used as a tool and I could see termites being picked off and that was exciting in itself chimpanzee using a tool but a few days later there were two chimpanzees and these were my two first the ones who first stopped being afraid David Greybeard and his companion Goliath and they were not only using pieces of grasses tools but they were picking leafy twigs and to make them into a tool and strip the leaves and at that time the definition of us was man the toolmaker a definition that set us apart was wiped away the chimps show this no sharp line dividing us from the rest of the animal kingdom the chimpanzee culture that Goodall spent years uncovering is in full display at the edge of the forest with the moat as their only barrier Conan's family can be themselves the artificial termite mound is a favorite destination for Megan and Magnum especially because it's filled with applesauce arguably better than termites Sydal Valentina Rose ignores the industrious adults clearly she has other things on her mind there's lots of open space where Susana and candy can each have some time alone Megan and passion can relax and groom an important part of chimpanzee bonding and friendship the grassy field gives the more domineering chimps room to work out their grievances and Tasha can hunt for tasty morsels hidden in the grass the youngsters love nothing more than climbing on a hot summer day a bucket sized popsicle is the ideal treat adults get first dibs but the youngsters try to muscle in Diane is only five but she likes to piggyback Natalie in a pretend game of mother and baby high above ground seven year old Tracy is an avid tree climbers not all of the chimps are comfortable climbing but Tracy was fortunate to have learned from her wild born mother after decades of studying chimpanzee behavior we've discovered that much of what we thought was instinct like climbing or using tools or carrying babies is learned and passed on from one chimpanzee to another like it is in humans it seems valentina rose was paying closer attention than she let on but just because the family has learned many of the skills of wild chimpanzees doesn't mean they could be released into the wild they can't be reintroduced into Africa right now the African sanctuaries are full the they're losing habitat there and the chimpanzees here Jim haven wouldn't know how to survive in wild Africa they could also introduce diseases into the wild that's because about half the chimpanzees at the sanctuary were deliberately infected in the lab with HIV and hepatitis the infected chimps live here in a separate part of the compound dr. jackson checks on them daily it's taken time but she's figured out their personality quirks he is a very sociable chef he's very submissive in his group but he loved human interaction he's actually known for what we call the peewee dance I mean that's a little two-step a little too sex okay we shall see when P we arrived at Jim haven in 2008 dr. Jackson didn't know what had happened to him in the lab I can't wake him up there the research histories aren't the greatest you know we do get medical records and it doesn't always include their research history well peewee was in quarantine Jackson discovered that he was HIV positive he is one of the hundreds of chimps who were bred specifically for HIV research in the late 1980s and 90s at that time the pressure was on to find a cure for hiv/aids it was during the same era that Jane Goodall learned of the terrible conditions chimps were subjected to in the name of research we have a session on conditions and some captive situations and never can I forget secretly film video of chimpanzees and medical research tiny cages why were they there because their bodies were admittedly so like ours that scientist felt they could use them like guinea pigs for learning about the human disease its cures and vaccines refusing to admit the equally dramatic you know behavioral similarities and so very well in these bleak barren cages maybe 30 40 years the HIV research was a dead end chimpanzees do not get sick from the virus in the way humans do hundreds of chimps were left languishing in biomed lambs but now they were highly infectious as well as psychologically damaged dr. Jackson's goal is to keep the infected chimps healthy and happy I may see subtle abnormalities in their blood work and will start supplementing just trying to maintain and salvage them you know their quality of life today peewee and the rest of the infected chimps and Coco's group are moving to this new open-air space Kathleen Taylor has worked in biomedical research for her this move is an important step Kathleen's Kryptonian care staff you can release Coco's group into their new yard knowing some of the worst housing conditions in the past working in the lab and seeing something like this this is like they won the lottery this is just so immense but it's just the first stage so we want to make sure that we temper the environment so that the next spot where they'll go out into the forest over here that they that they'll be able to handle that with ease space to roam is one thing but sometimes you have to think outside the box to keep chimps occupied we think a [Music] at Chimp Haven everyone has a favorite come on when I started here four years ago was very aggressive towards me he spit he always vocalize toward me a lot of negative interaction on between the two of us so I decided that I take the time to mend and create a bonding relationship with him and I realized that was all he ever really wanted I'm from the very beginning with my attention Megaman I love my handsome man like the chimpanzees who arrived at Chimp Haven have been shaped by their traumatic histories take Henry for example he likes to watch the world go by but before coming here he was isolated and neglected Henry is a special case he was actually a rescue chimp he was a pet at home and he was rescued by the Houston SPCA and he came here having never seen a chimp not knowing how to act like a chimp and he's actually grown to become the dominant male in his group Henry mark knows all the personalities here grandma she's going to be 61 in December and she's our oldest chimp and one of the oldest in captivity across the country she was actually born in the labs to her parents for two of the first 100 chimps in research so they know her exact birthdate as opposed to the ones that were born in the wild and were captured there although conditions have improved in labs chimpanzees who come here still carry the weight of their past my background when I started working in the laboratory situation was chimps were singly housed a lot of them and they never got to touch another chimp they never got to go and do the activities that again while their wild counterparts did and when you see that happen here where they get to touch a chin for the first time then they start grooming and making the sounds and it's it's like they're growing mark uses simple training to help build trust it's a contrast from the invasive procedures these chimps may have experienced in the lab but good oh good job so what I'm doing is part of our positive reinforcement training program and what we do is we ask the chance to present body parts so that when they have a wound or something wrong and they're stressed out from that they already know how to present it to us later so we can examine the wound see if it's something I need stitches maybe something that just needs they just need antibiotics or some painkillers to get through it here sure or if they have like some swelling or something around from a bug bite or something like that arm belly it's all for our medical program we just want to reduce their stresses when they might already be stressed out from some situation hi ivy thank you for the tress this group was also trained a lot to clean the trash out of their yard so they're always giving us whatever they find when they come up and they see fruits that they'll get a piece of fruit as they trade [Music] with the training session over the chimpanzees get a surprise visitor [Music] music can soothe any soul the sanctuary uses it as a way to calm nerves and to engage the mind the violin doesn't appeal to all of Steve's audience but a few of the animals are wrapped if a live violinist seems out of place here that's kind of the point you think is a pretty important part of our enrichment program it's not something we do all the time just so that it stays as a novel activity because they'll start to situate it after after awhile but we definitely try to get different live musicians to come in with likes always more interesting for a human to go to a live concert versus just listening to the radio boredom is the enemy [Music] enrichment is very effective and in creating mentally healthy chimps and even helping to rehabilitate champ sort of come from environments that were limited in their in their past it takes some creative thinking to keep these chimps busy many of them will be here for decades if these chimps were in the wild hunting for food would drive almost everything they do so it plays a big role at the sanctuary to like I mean the enrichment team finds original ways for the chimps to forage for their food it's going to go to the whole colony as part of their novel foods these are part of our occupational enrichment where they have to work to get the food the chimpanzees will have to rip the paper off not so different from prying open nut shells or peeling bark off a tree carbs protein it's all good for the chimps I'm making log foragers so what we do is we try to get a substance that's the right consistency that will stick to the log when they're hanging and then we hang them on the outside and the chimps can spin it around Aaron and Leilani's food grunts signal the arrival of the treats for chimpanzees whose health has been compromised there's a lot of nutrition packed into playtime and the eager chimps always love getting their hands dirty from your eyes of course they wouldn't see this in the wild but the occasional movie offers many different sights and sounds and novelty is key [Music] those chimps who don't care for Shrek can simply kill now it's a strange thing trying to find ways to engage and entertain chimpanzees when they're the ones who have always entertained us but for chimps who were broken in the lab behavioral enrichment can be transformative a happy chimps in the healthy Jeff and that's really the goal why we're doing it is you know to try to give them the best license that we can possibly give them and it's not just a one-way relationship I really found in working with chimps the chimps that do take a little longer to win over it's so rewarding to finally get them to the point where they trust you and and these tips especially have had such a such a background where they're their interactions people haven't always been positive there's been an important evolution in our thinking taking care of complex sentient beings means more than just rescuing them from a difficult life when you spend time with chimpanzees you recognize the way in which life matters to them they care about things they don't care about the same things we care about but they care about a lot of things they care about each other they care about their human caregivers they care about what to eat some like to eat grapes some don't like to eat grapes some like to climb trees their lives have values that matter to them and insofar as we recognize those kinds of values as important in ourselves similar values in others I think from an ethical point of view matter as well what does the future hold for the last 1000 chimps you we've come a long way toward recognizing the depth and emotional complexity of chimpanzees I've met so many people when they have the opportunity to get up close with the chimpanzee or one of the other Apes and they look into the eyes they tell me that is a profoundly life-changing moment there is an affinity I think the Apes and people feel it Oh buddy what pleases me the most is when you look into their eyes there allows me that opportunity to look into their eyes which means they trust me they're not avoiding eye contact that would up an image and they're looking and they're peering at me this is a time period at them why why are you dr. Jackson one midgets trust but their special relationship was cut short was 44 years old so you know that's considered a geriatrics chimp he was a peacemaker in this group he's very very special special guy I got a call shortly after midnight stating that his breathing was labored and I said I'm on my way I'm about time I made it here he unfortunately had passed away it was hard you know that was that was my boy but I did find solace and you knowing that he was able to spend out the latter parts of his years here it's a haven and knowing that he was not only loved by myself but he was loved by all of the staff here other chimpanzees here are at the beginning of their lives and could live for 3040 years maybe longer and as more and more of the one-thousand champs are retired Chimp Haven will need to expand it's a costly proposition but the u.s. is at a turning point it's been a long road when I first started working on topics related to captive chimpanzees something like 20 years ago I had really no idea that by this point in time we would be discussing the retirement of chimpanzees from laboratories into sanctuary and that I was able in 2013 to develop the last 1000 chimpanzee website with the expectation that I in my lifetime would be turning these names green is really joyous part of what my efforts are is to try to help to keep the momentum going recognizing that this is a process chimpanzees aren't going to be retired all at once that's because in a controversial move the National Institutes of Health will choose 50 of these chimps for future research it's a process that could take years it means that some aging chimps won't live long enough to enjoy retirement there are also chimps in private hands drug companies own about 450 they plan to retire them by 2020 this could be fast-tracked if the u.s. designates captive chimps as an endangered species like their wild counterparts it means a lot more chimpanzees will find safe haven in the care of sanctuaries it's a life well deserved it's often easy when you don't have a relationship with the animal to say oh it's just an animal but it's truly not these are beings these are feeling caring loving beings and they put their life on the line for us unwillingly for so many years it's only right that we give back it's only right that we provide an environment where they can live out the rest of their lives you [Music] you [Music] you [Applause] [Music]