Vanilla the Chimp Exalts in Freedom After Decades in Hell
A 28-year-old chimpanzee named Vanilla was saved from a notoriously cruel lab in upstate New York. When introduced to her new digs – a 150-acre sanctuary in Florida – her reaction to seeing the sky and feeling grass are heartwarming.
Born in captivity in 1995, Vanilla was separated from her mother and spent the first two years of her life in a biomedical research laboratory that specialized in HIV and hepatitis research.
“It was a horrible lab and protested by animal rights activists for decades. Jane Goodall targeted the place as a hellhole,” Dan Mathews, the sanctuary’s director of events and special projects, told the New York Post. “The chimps there watched TV and never saw the light of day. The separation was because mothers are so protective of their offspring that it would have been difficult to experiment on [the babies].”
Following that hell, Vanilla and her sister Shake were relocated to a nonprofit refuge north of Los Angeles, but conditions did not improve much, as the sisters were placed with four other chimps in an enclosure the size of a garage. The overcrowded refuge went out of business in 2019.
Last year Vanilla and Shake were rescued by Save the Chimps and brought to Fort Pierce, Florida. After some quarantine and acclimation, the girls were finally released in a spacious, outdoor sanctuary where they can actually socialize with other chimps. Their first day on the outside was recorded in a now-viral video, posted on Facebook.
Vanilla was understandably wary about stepping outside at first. “Dwight, the alpha male who’s in charge of the chimps, coaxed her out with open arms,” Mathews said. “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.”
Her new home is located on what had once been an orange grove north of West Palm Beach. It has 12 man-made islands, each measuring three to five acres. If you want to help out the privately funded paradise – as have Paul McCartney, Alan Cumming, and Pink, among others – visit their website. Vanilla has a birthday coming up soon.
Photo credit: Save the Chimps
