It has been one year since Africa arrived at the MONA sanctuary.  You all probably remember her as the bald chimpanzee with her head covered in sores (in the last issue we recounted how well she was doing).  Now, her hair is like that of any other chimpanzee and she is rather beautiful, even competing for the most beautiful female chimpanzee with our own Sara. We would have liked to report that she is well integrated into the family group by now, but the association process is still going on and it is proving to be bit tricky.

Although her attitude at first was quite positive and she has made good progress, she is now showing increasing hesitation towards the second group of chimpanzees.  We are beginning to understand what is happening; it seems that she won’t interact with chimps that she finds intimidating. She established a good relationship with Romie and tolerates, but does not interact with, Toto and Tico. The former because of his advanced age with his very slow and deliberate movements and the latter because, as you all know by now, he prefers to keep his distance from his conspecifics. So all this gives Africa sufficient freedom to keep to herself and the others do not generally seek her out in order to interact with her.  She thus feels comfortably secure and spends long periods lying in the higher hanging hammocks grooming herself or just enjoying the sunshine. Having been raised as a pet when young and then not being able as a juvenile to permanently live in the space used by her host family, she became used to spending a lot of time alone, reducing the number of social interactions that she normally would make with others to meet her own social needs. Our colleague Alejandra is familiar with all of these behaviours because, as part of her Field Assistant training programme at MONA, she patiently observed Africa for hours ignoring the other chimpanzees, sleeping or even pulling out her hair with her own hands because of stress.

So taking into account all these issues, we are continuing to try different techniques to encourage her to socialise more readily such as presenting her with more ‘active’ individuals and this will most certainly obligate her to make contact and develop relationships which she conveniently can avoid with Toto and Tico.  The situation has been quite complicated for everyone involved, but once we get passed the initial encounters, Africa will benefit from increased stimulation and a whole new world of possibilities to interact will open up to her. Africa’s first sessions were quite eventful, but encouraging because she has a strong personality and that allows her to respond to the taunts made by Waty, Juanito, Sara or Nico.  They do not hesitate to demonstrate their status initially, but once Africa relaxes, curiosity overtakes them and they are then able to run around with her, tickle her and play other chimpanzee games that she hasn’t experienced before and that she seems to enjoy.  A couple of days ago during the fourth session with Waty, Africa had the chance to interact with her when she let down her guard a bit.  Africa responded by approaching and touching Waty´s arm to the surprise of all present.  These small gestures are actually big steps in the association process and we are confident that she will find her place within the group very soon.