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Smiling chimpanzee drawing8/7/2023 “Her expressions are remarkable,” she says. LB hugging Collin.Īide Mackenzie speaks affectionately about LB while informing me of her communicative prowess. We can draw assumptions that can be well-informed by their behavior, but paying attention to their mannerisms, their body language, and the sounds that they make-it’s how we understand how the group is functioning.” Caregiver Mackenzie Reading Facial Expressions of An Expressive ChimpĬhimp LB has an especially expressive face, making her caregivers’ mood-reading job easier. “We’re not in their heads, so we can’t tell for certain how they’re feeling. These tools represent one of our best metrics for understanding chimps’ moods.Ĭaregiver Mackenzie explains the importance of closely observing the chimps, saying, “With the chimps we have to watch very carefully to determine how they’re feeling.” Staff must develop an understanding of the chimps’ baseline body and facial expressions so they can tell when something is ‘off’. And skilled at interpreting body language, too. Seriously! Spend some time at Project Chimps and you can’t help but become skilled at reading facial expressions. They scream, they show all their teeth, they stand up to look intimidating, sometimes reach out for reassurance, and so on.Working around chimps, you basically develop a superpower. Since they can’t say “I’m really scared” they use all the nonverbal cues to let everyone around them know. Notice how Annie is showing all of her teeth:Ĭhimpanzees rely so much on nonverbal behaviors (actually-so do humans, it’s just that we talk so much you don’t always notice the nonverbal stuff) so it’s really important to send social cues to convey what the context is. Here’s an example of a fear grimace during a conflict from a few years ago. I am very passionate about helping all of you help them! So in the future, try to avoid buying media that exploits chimpanzees and definitely subscribe to the Eyes on Apes Take Action alerts so you will know when there’s something you can help out with. I quickly learned that there’s a reason we call it a fear grimace-my first time seeing a chimpanzee conflict was when I truly knew that chimpanzees do not smile with happiness the same way we do.įrom that moment on, I decided that I wanted to help educate others about what I had learned that day, and now I am very fortunate to be working not only as a caregiver at CSNW but also the advocacy coordinator for the sanctuary. I was upset with the fact that I had contributed to the industry that threatens and abuses chimpanzees in order to get that “funny” expression. I knew I had laughed at commercials with “smiling” chimpanzees, gone to movies and even bought birthday cards because they were funny to me. When they are afraid or when they are trying to be intimidating, they will show all their top teeth and do what we call a “fear grimace.” It felt pretty silly to do, but they explained that a human smile is seen as a threatening expression to chimpanzees. We tried a “chimpanzee smile” by covering our top teeth and showing our bottom teeth. This sounded so strange to me at the time. I went to a presentation before visiting the chimps that I eventually worked for at the (now former) CHCI, and they explained that when we were around the chimpanzees we needed to cover our top teeth. One of the very first things I learned about chimpanzees when I started working in this field was how they smile.
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