Twycross Chimps, past, present and future.
Thought why this is expensive gift shop and leopard enclosure being built when Chimps are living in hell. The ease of the introduction and creation of the new groups shows they should have done it years ago. Never saw Chimps properly interacting until I went to Monkey World!
My sentiments too, though remember 'Himalaya' resulted from a different funding source, but IMO its 'modernism' only highlighted the poor Chimpanzee housing even more. I said previously on here that the Chimpanzee moves should have been made thirty years ago, but I don't think they had anyone there who was experienced or particularly wanted to make it happen, they also seemed to think it was difficult/impossible to do, though like many complicated animal introductions, with care it turned out to be perfectly feasible in reality.
They made an earlier attempt at recognising their shortcomings and providing better conditions by creating the small 'colony' of about six animals in the 'Chimpanzee colony' house, but of course that didn't help all the majority still living in the old cages. I appreciate they had no alternative accomodation they could move the rest into at the time, but in those days, when the Zoo's finances were much healthier than they are now, they could have addressed that but didn't, instead building or converting Houses for the other higher profile Ape species e.g. Gorillas & the Bonobos.
Some of those older Chimps earned the money from their appearances in the early T.V. adverts that helped to build the Zoo, yet they continued living in the poorest conditions. And one simple improvement which would have cost nothing would have been to open the dividing doors in the Chimp Row/Green Mile and allow all the seperated individual pairs and trios, who must have been very familiar with each other by sight and sound anyway, from so long living adjacently to each other, to be all together as one socially enriched group, at least in the outdoor areas, but even that did not happen. Why not? Only with the recent emptying of the 2nd Gorilla House of Gorillas(a wise move IMO) was an opportunity created for the first time to actually redistribute all chimps from those old cages into three existing Ape Houses. This has also temporarily bypassed the need to build new housing for them, something which has been talked about for a number of years but which they seemingly can't afford at present. But is the current set-up a 'halfway house' one, or will it be much longer term?
The situation now is definately a big improvement, but the reality is still several (either five or six) 'subgroups' of Chimps living in the split/divided accomodation provided by the three 1960's-style buildings. Whether they now go further with more integrations within these houses remains to be seen(that may well depend on the individuals concerned) as does whether the plan of exhibiting them as a single large Chimp group in a purpose-built and modern environment goes ahead or not.
