Vanilla was born into captivity at LEMSIP lab in 1995 and immediately separated from her mother. At the lab she lived in an elevated wire-mesh cage and forced to eat and sleep above feces. Through the late 1990s, researchers infected the chimpanzee with various diseases. The lab specialized in research for HIV and hepatitis.
MICHAEL KAPLAN: For the first time in her 29 years, a chimp named Vanilla finally saw the sky. A viral video, posted to YouTube by the animal sanctuary Save the Chimps, shows the primate looking absolutely astonished. “She is clearly elated to have suddenly found freedom,” Dan Mathews, the sanctuary’s director of events and special projects, told The Post. The heartwarming video was shared at Friday’s American Society of Primatologists symposium in Reno by Save the Chimps’ primatologist Dr. Andrew Halloran.
Vanilla, a 29-year-old survivor of the notorious Laboratory for Experimental Medicine and Surgery in Primates (LEMSIP), located in Tuxedo, NY, saw the open sky after one year of arriving at Save the Chimps sanctuary in Fort Pierce, Florida. Mathews said Vanilla wasn’t even sure about stepping outside at first. “Dwight, the alpha male who’s in charge of the chimps, coaxed her out with open arms,” Mathews explained.
“In the video, you see her going into his arms for a hug. It is the first time she was outdoors with more than 10 feet of fence around her on all sides from top to bottom.” In the video, Vanilla looks up in wonderment, just as a human might upon making a marvelous discovery. “Chimps have 98.8% of DNA similarity with humans,” said Mathews. “Now that Vanilla is out, she hardly goes back to the care-house. Yesterday, she was sunbathing on one of the outdoor platforms.”
After decades locked away, Vanilla is living the good life at what Mathews calls “Florida’s wildest retirement community.” She was born into captivity at LEMSIP in 1995 — and immediately separated from her mother. “It was a horrible lab and protested by animal rights activists for decades. Jane Goodall targeted the place as a hellhole,” Mathews said. “The chimps there watched TV and never saw the light of day…
Through the late 1990s, the lab specialized in research for HIV and hepatitis. “Vanilla was one of the last who could have been tested,” said Mathews. “Researchers drew blood and did biopsies. They infected the chimpanzees with various diseases, but I don’t know if Vanilla was infected.”
Animals at the lab lived in elevated wire-mesh cages and kept in a manner that amounted to cruelty. “They used mesh so they could clean cages by hosing them down,” said Mathews. “Then the waste would go out through the mesh, collect on the ground and be hosed down from the ground. That way the chimps never had to be let out of their cages for cleaning purposes. It was convenient for the facility but cruel for the chimps. These creatures, with a strong sense of smell, were forced to eat and sleep above feces.”
In fact, it was the cages that led to LEMSIP being shut down. “The USDA wanted the cages upgraded but LEMSIP didn’t want to spend the money to do so,” said Mathews. “As a result, the lab was shut down and more than 100 chimps had to be relocated.”…
Vanilla arrived at the chimp-tastic sanctuary in July 2022. “She spent a few months in quarantine, with other new arrivals,” said Mathews. “Then it became clear that she fit in with a group of other chimps. At that point, we introduced her and the group to different islands to see where they would fit in…
The outdoors-loving Vanilla now forages for strategically placed food, swings around on lengths of rope and, if inspiration strikes, has opportunities to paint. “Vanilla has a long future; she can live here for another 30 or 40 years,” said Mathews. “She seems elated to have her own world, to finally have the closest thing to a natural habitat. She is embracing it”. SOURCE…
RELATED VIDEOS: