Largest collection of chimps?

lorna_wilkie

lorna_wilkie

Member
Hi,

I'm hoping someone here will be able to help me. I'm starting to think about organising research for my dissertation at uni - I'm just about to start 2nd year, so still plenty of time to sort it all out.

I want to do behavioural research with captive chimps - not entirely sure of exactly what at the moment, but potentially about the mother/baby bonds or something similar. I'd like to observe the largest group possible so I can get the most accurate results in what I end up researching.

I was wondering if anyone has any idea which zoo has the largest collection of chimps in the UK? I'm thinking it'd be either Chester or Edinburgh? But I'm hoping someone will have a better idea.

Thanks for any info anyone can give me :)
 
I think Chester has around 30, or at least they did the last time I saw about them. I don't know about the others though. Maybe even Twycross or Monkey World are worth considering? I know Twycross has multiple enclosures for them.
 
Javan Rhino said:
I think Chester has around 30, or at least they did the last time I saw about them. I don't know about the others though. Maybe even Twycross or Monkey World are worth considering? I know Twycross has multiple enclosures for them.
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Yes Twycross does have multiple Chimp enclosure`s but from memory none of them are in double figures for numbers kept!
 
Colchester have a family group of 4 generations, but have nowhere near as many as MW or Chester. Colchester's 2 kids (Tumba and Talia) are both mother raised and their granny is an ex lab lady but raised her kids too
 
Chester's group consists of seven males and nineteen females.

The group and enclosure were once studied by NASA, so you'd be in good company.
 
Monkey World claims to have the biggest collection of Chimps outside of Africa, but they are split into 4 different groups. I'm not sure what the biggest individual group is.
 
zoogiraffe said:
Yes Twycross does have multiple Chimp enclosure`s but from memory none of them are in double figures for numbers kept!
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Ahh cool. I've only been once and just remember seeing a chimp in nearly every other enclosure :). Chester's are the biggest individual group I know of from zoo's I've visited, are Edinburgh's still split into 2 groups?
 
edinburgh has 22 chimps, i think the split is around 50/50 for males and females. they are hoping to breed from them, but there are no infants in the group at the moment.
 
does edinburgh not have more tha that am sure i seen in the paper they had brought in even more and at one point had 3 groups now 2 as the first lot where mixed from the ones they got
 
edinburgh did bring in another group of chimps earlier this year, but this is included in the total of 22 now.
 
Edinburgh has 22 chimps which have just been integrated into one group from the original 11 along with the 11 new arrivals from Beekse Bergen that arrived last year. They have no infants as yet though.
 
sorry just clicked lol its because the paper was going on about claus and a 3rd group but he was one of the 11 that came over
 
Thanks so much for everyones help! I'm at uni in Manchester, so I was hoping to go to a zoo relatively close to there, so it looks like Chester or Twycross would be the best really.
Does anyone have any idea the kinds of group sizes at Twycross? I couldn't see any information on their group sizes on the website. Although maybe having multiple groups on the same site could be quite useful as well - depending on what I end up looking at. Are they all breeding/mixed groups?

I did think about Monkey World, it would be quite good for me in some ways, I have visited quite a few times and can recognise quite a few of the chimps already, which would save quite a lot of time getting to know the individuals. My main area of interest is mother/infant relationships, and the impact on the troop - which could be difficult to observe at Monkey World as Paddy's is the only group with youngsters. It's also pretty far from uni and where I live, which could also be a problem!

Now I guess I just need to figure out exactly what I'm going to study.... could be a bit trickier!
 
lorna_wilkie said:
Does anyone have any idea the kinds of group sizes at Twycross? I couldn't see any information on their group sizes on the website. Although maybe having multiple groups on the same site could be quite useful as well - depending on what I end up looking at. Are they all breeding/mixed groups?
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I'd skip Twycross for your purposes:

1. Most of the groups act like they're on Mogadons -very inactive and atypical compared with Chimps I've seen elswhere;
2. Very few births, so studying mother-offspring relationships would be difficult;
3. Don't get me started on the "Green Mile";
4. The Bonobos are active, but given they're separated (I believe on gender lines) are hardly a typical group.
 
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You are going to have a problem if your main interest is mother/offspring relationships as Chimps are generally in a 'do not breed' situation in UK Zoos . The exception is for the pure West African sub-species , which Edinburgh now have quite a few of but have not yet bred .

I visited Twycross last week . There is only one infant , housed in the long row of old cages - the original Ape Housing , groups of no more than 4 in each of these . I reckon there were 6 in the 'Chimp House' , another 6 in the 'Old Gorilla House' and a couple of teenage males in the 'Nursery' . As Shorts says , apart from the odd outbreak of screaming tantrums , they do not do a lot .

There are some youngsters in the big Chester group which is in far more interesting and extensive housing and is generally more active .
 
Twycross has 1 group of 6 (no babies) in a separate enclosure, 1 family group of 3 in the Green Mile (mum, dad & baby Tulli), a batchelor pair in another largish enclosure (Tommy and Danny I think), then about 4 or 5 more sub sections in the awful 'Green Mile' (don't get me started either) which on average contain 2-3 chimps each. The signage isn't very clear to be honest ...... I went there yesterday and there was one section with 4 chimps in it, but only 3 name signs on the wall (this was the group with the totally bald male teenage chimp whose name I can't remember right now), but there was also a brown chimp in with them who didn't appear to be identified.

Some of Twycross' signs on the Green Mile refer to 'the group' but I've always thought this is misleading. For example, it talks about the 'grandma of the group', but the way it's accommodated, I can't see how she can have a typical grandmother role due to the lack of physical and social interaction between all the animals housed there ..... how much vocal communication 'counts' I don't know ? There is also some very limited physical interaction via the chainmail fences between chimps held in sections adjacent to each other but again, this is hardly typical or natural.

I always feel incredibly sad after visiting Twycross' chimps.

It's a shame Colchester is too far away. Although it's only a small group of 8 they have a great family there. Billy Jo is a great grandmother, with 2 daughters Tara and Kora. Tara is Tekita's mum, Tekita is mum to Tumba and Talia. Pippin is the babies' father. There's also another adult male Tombe who's the dominant male - mostly - am not sure of the current situation, but keepers have recently suggested that this role swaps between Pippin and Tombe.
 
Lorna, i feel chester would be the best group of chimps for your studies its near for you
 
Twycross Chimps.

GillP said:
Some of Twycross' signs on the Green Mile refer to 'the group' but I've always thought this is misleading. For example, it talks about the 'grandma of the group', but the way it's accommodated, I can't see how she can have a typical grandmother role due to the lack of physical and social interaction between all the animals housed there ..... how much vocal communication 'counts' I don't know ? There is also some very limited physical interaction via the chainmail fences between chimps held in sections adjacent to each other but again, this is hardly typical or natural.

I always feel incredibly sad after visiting Twycross' chimps.
The bald Chimp is 'Jambo' (son of 'Coco' the original choc chimp)

Its my theory that all(or nearly all) those chimps in the 'Green Mile' cages, consider themselves as one group as they all have daily & continual visual and vocal contact. If Edinburgh can successfully introduce two large entirely unfamiliar groups of fully adult Chimps in a couple of months, I'm sure Twycross could succeed with animals that have lived alongside each other for decades. Much of the screaming and display that goes on between the 'groups' or pairs is ritualised, not real aggression I am quite sure.
I know Twycross have talked about having one large Chimp group(as at e.g Chester and Edinburgh) for all the Zoo's chimps but building that could be MANY years away yet- particularly since the next project on the horizon, the Lion/Dhole exhibits seems to face further delay now. So perhaps a start might be to get the Green Mile chimps(or most of them) together into one social group, and I can't see any strong reason why they don't do this.
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