Primarily Primates (PPI) is the oldest primate sanctuary in the United States. In 1978, Wally Swet set out to start PPI after recognizing that many primates needed homes after being abandoned by their owners. He was among the first to attempt the cohabitation in chimpanzees that is so necessary for their rehabilitation. Primarily Primates is a place where an animal is not seen as worthless when it becomes too old to be a reliable test subject, its instinct kicks in and it loses its baby-like appeal, or the research grant is gone. It is a place where an animal can retire into a life as close as possible to the life they would have had in the wild.
My time at Primarily Primates consisted mostly of routines. The director of the sanctuary Stephen Tello hired me to help with a vasectomy project intended to prevent the already large population of lemurs from breeding past the limits of their habitats. Preventing animals from breeding allows the sanctuary the space and funds to adopt additional abused animals. The sprawling facility has plenty of room to grow; it’s the funds that are hard to come by. For this project, I caged over twenty lemurs and assisted in the vasectomy of one such lemur and the check up of three females in the same enclosure. This did not remain my main purpose at PPI, however.
Within two days of my arrival, I was asked to fill in for a big cat specialist who was taking two weeks’ vacation to get married. I gladly accepted the responsibility. The animals I was to care for were the lemurs, sirvels, bobcats, gibbons, patas monkeys, mountain lions, one leopard, and an adult male lion. On Tuesdays and Wednesdays I was also to care for the many tamarins housed at PPI.
Finally, I cared for Pierre, a very sensitive patas monkey who had experienced a stroke. He was paralyzed, with only limited movement in his torso and limbs. He lay on his side in a kennel, acquiring bed sores, and depended entirely on the diligent care of the Veterinarian and a veterinary technician. Most animals that have strokes are euthanized, but Pierre had experienced a stroke before and recovered quickly. This, plus the fact that patas monkeys are an endangered species, made this decision very difficult, and indeed, the decision had not been made when I left PPI. This is a fact of life at Primarily Primates. The animals who have been rescued and housed by PPI are often not only members of an endangered species, but are also elderly, infirm, or psychologically damaged from their lives as research animals.
Many of the primates now cared for by PPI suffered horrific lives as research subjects at NASA and Holloman Air Force Base. The records on the NASA history website describe strapping chimps to chairs which traveled at high velocities to test the effects of the force of gravity, high speed collisions, and supersonic speed movement. NASA also studied decompression, for which they designed a sled to reach speeds of 400 miles and then abruptly stop. They also tested effects of windblast at high speeds. During these tests, chimpanzees were exposed to windblasts of 3,500 square pounds per square foot. The reports include descriptions of the third degree burns, broken necks, smashed skulls and electrical burns. The animals that survived these tests were eventually leased to the Coulston Foundation where they became the tools for biomedical research, until 1999 when the U.S. Air Force finally decided to give them a better life.
In 1999, Primarily Primates became the only sanctuary to be awarded chimpanzees from the Air Force, but the sanctuary was not equipped to care for all 140 chimpany previously had beenzees to be dispursed from Holloman Air Force Base. This fact left Stephen Tello with the hard responsibility of “picking and saving lives.” He chose animals who had not been subjected to AIDS or Hepatitis research, those who were elderly and thus had spent 25 to 30 years as vivisection animals, or were relatively young and thus might be rehabilitated fairly well. All in all, the sanctuary received 31 chimpanzees from the U.S. Air Force out of 141. Luckily, Chimp Haven, a sanctuary located in Louisiana, sued the U.S. Air Force and was eventually awarded 100 chimpanzees. This left 10 unlucky chimps in the hands of Fred Coulston, of the Coulston Foundation.
The story PPI staff told me about one of these chimps will serve to illustrate the vital role played by PPI and similar sanctuaries, and why I wanted to intern here. GiGi was an ambassador to PPI, one of the first five chimpanzees to arrive from Holloman Air Force Base, as she was elderly and Steven did not wish to make her wait for the Air Force Chimpanzee enclosure to be built.
GiGi was most likely captured as an infant in the wild to become part of the research program at the Holloman Air force base. Her care takers at the base approximated the year of her birth to be 1959, based on her dentition. Stephen described GiGi to me as a, “feisty old lady.” During her time at the base, she had been subjected to various tests. GiGi had been placed in centrifugal force machines, dropped from large heights in trash bags to adjust to rapid descent, and subjected to rapid decompression studies. Presumably to monitor her brain activity, a metal plate and several electrodes were surgically placed in GiGi’s brain and activated during flight simulations and decompression studies. GiGi still had that metal plate in her brain when she died in 2006. In the 1980s the U.S. Air Force leased its research subjects to biomedical research facilities. Many of these chimpanzees were among the very first to be subjected to AIDS and Hepatitis research. Although GiGi was leased out for biomedical research, she was never subjected to AIDS or Hepatitis research and thus was allowed to live her remaining years at PPI.
The last seven years of GiGi’s life were spent at Primarily Primates. GiGi was independent. She was most likely previously housed alone for so long that she had little interest in her cospecifics in her habitat at PPI. Late last year, PPI went into a short-lived ill-conceived receivership ultimately resulting in new management because of allogations that animals were not housed properly and funds were being misused. What happened to Gigi is a tragic irony. Within 52 days of receivership care, GiGi passed away. She had lost most of her weight in between her last check up and the necropsy. “In seven and a half weeks, this ape literally wasted away.” It is a shame that GiGi’s illness went unchecked and that her last few weeks were most likely filled with stress, which may have contributed to her quick demise. However, it is not a shame, but instead a triumph, that GiGi could live her last seven years in the closest thing to the natural environment she always deserved.
In the world of biomedical research, most biomedical research chimpanzees are essentially sold for parts at the end of their lives. The blood, plasma, organs, and the serums and antibodies derived from them are sold for research purposes. Thus, even in death the research facilities profit from the primates. Only a lucky few end their days in the sunny enclosures of a sanctuary, with grass under their feet and lots of cospecifics to socialize with.