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Saved from laboratories, the chimps at Washington Chimpanzee and Human Communication Institute have learned to talk to each other and to humans in sign language. Pauline Bedford spent a working holiday with these amazing animals.

 It was one of the saddest things I have ever seen. The chimps had lived most of their lives in a laboratory, subjected to unspeakable cruelty, suspended above the ground in cages, never seeing the sun or feeling the fresh air. Even on the video, you could see the pleading in their eyes - they must have been so frightened. I could not understand how people could treat any animal like this, but knowing what I had learned over the previous few days, I found it even harder to believe that anyone could be so cruel to chimpanzees.

I had won my trip to the Institute in a competition run by the charity Earthwatch, who organise working holidays on conservation research projects all over the world, and along with six other volunteers, my job was to observe the chimps behaviour and note down everything I saw. The idea is that by learning more about what chimps naturally do when they are in conditions as close as possible to the wild, animal experts can campaign for better conditions for chimps that are in captivity.

I was staying at the Chimpanzee and Human Communication Institute (CHCI) based at Central Washington University, near Seattle. A wonderful place and home to a unique family of chimps, named in order of family importance - Washoe, Loulis, Dar, Tatu and Moja who sadly has died since my visit. Washoe is the senior chimp and had been taken from her mother in the wild when she was a tiny baby to be used in space research. The others were all born in laboratories, but were now at the Institute where they live in conditions that are as close as possible to those in the wild. 

What is unique about them all is that they have all been taught to communicate using sign language - Washoe was the first chimp ever to learn sign language - and watching them talk to each other and to the workers at the centre was probably the most amazing thing I have ever seen. They sign to each other when they are playing, and even when they are fighting – just like in a family row! They will comment on passers-by, tell the staff when it is bedtime and develop string-sign language by joining single word-signs in one action to describe things. More importantly, if they do not know the sign for a word or object they invent a description by stringing known words together. For example, seeing the vegetable ‘radish’ caused them to invent the sign-word ‘cry hurt food’ or for a watermelon ‘drink fruit’. They are just so intelligent! If someone misunderstands what they trying to say, the chimps quickly realise and try to put you right. Tatu, for example, loves holidays such as Thanksgiving and Christmas and will anticipate when they are coming by observing outside activity and ask about the coming event. Loulis was actually taught to sign by Washoe, who adopted him after her own baby died.

The Institute joint-Principals, Roger and Debbie Fouts, who founded and run the Institute, wanted to see if Washoe would pass on the language to Loulis, so when he was a baby, the staff were not allowed to sign to Washoe when Lousis was around. Within 18 months, Washoe had taught Lousis hundreds of signs.

When at the Institute our first task was to learn to identify each chimp - their enclosure measures 6000 square feet, so we needed to be able to pick out the one chimp we were assigned to watch at a distance. Before I arrived, I always thought one chimp looked pretty much like another, but I soon realised that they all had different features and personalities. Washoe is very much the mother of the troupe, even though the chimps are not actually related - she looks after the others, and sticks up for the underdog when there is trouble. Loulis, the little one, was a real charmer, who loved to sit and watch us watching him.

They all had their own quirky ways, just like people do, and they live together just like a little family, all caring for each other. When the staff arrived on the morning after Moja had died, they found Tatu beside her, signing to them the words ‘Moja hurt, Moja hurt’ - nothing could be more clear or more sad as the chimp desperately tried to communicate to the human trainers.

The chimps are intelligent caring beings, each with its own personality and indeed, genetically, the chimpanzee is 98.76% identical to the human. Amazingly, in the gene order of things, chimpanzees are closer to humans than they are to other apes like gorillas. That’s their downfall though - because they are so like us, they are considered good subjects for animal experiments.

Roger and Debbie Fouts campaign against the use of chimps in scientific research, and we were shown videos of what goes on in these awful places. In one, a chimp was being rescued from a laboratory but previously all she had ever known was life in a cage suspended above the ground just so it was ‘convenient’ for the staff to clean the cage. Can you believe how callous this is! She never had her feet on solid ground and was so bewildered by the freedom offered her that it took an hour to persuade her just to step out of the cage.

It would have been heartbreaking to see such cruelty at any time, but after I had spent time with the chimps at CHCI, watching Washoe telling Loulis off, or Tatu signing her excitement about the St Patrick Day decorations the staff had put up, it was almost unbearable to consider the history of these lovely animals. I had known little about chimps being used in experiments before I went to the Institute and no idea of the extent of such exploitation of these intelligent animals.

Would you believe that chimpanzees are used for military research as well as for medical experimentation? Did you know that they have been used in research into vaccines for AIDS despite a natural immunity to the virus so it is impossible to tell for sure if any trial vaccine works on them? It’s just so wrong.

It was horrific to think that some of the chimps at CHCI had been rescued from such ghoulish places but at least they are now the lucky ones. Although they are still in captivity – they wouldn’t survive in the wild - their home is as close as it could possibly be to the conditions they could expect naturally. The indoor area is full of nets and benches and non-operational fire hoses are suspended for the chimps to climb and swing on with little platforms high up they can go to when they want to be on their own; outside there are trees and swings on which they can play.

During working hours, we sit in the outer enclosure divided from the chimps by a glass wall, and in semi-shade so we are not too obtrusive. Sometimes they like to come and look at people, but in this kind of set-up we make sure they can ignore the observers when they want. We are each assigned a chimp to observe for 15 minutes at a time, and report on what they did.

Chimps in captivity need a lot of stimulation, so they had lots of things in the enclosure with them - shoes, hats, clothes, mirrors, books and magazines - and they seemed to love playing with this kind of material. They were really funny sometimes - Moja liked dressing up, and would put on a hat and then sit and look at herself in a mirror, and Washoe would sit back with her feet up on the side of the enclosure and flick through a mail order catalogue as though she was choosing her winter wardrobe. Dar loved wearing shoes, though his feet were so big we had trouble getting any to fit him. 

People who come to the project think they are going to sit in with the chimps and that it will be all be cuddly - believe me, it is not like that! Roger and Debbie explained to us that chimps just do not need or benefit from this kind of contact with humans - such familiarity can be dangerous. They are very strong animals and even a playful swipe could flatten you. So although they were funny to watch, you never felt that the chimps were being robbed of their dignity - they are not circus animals doing tricks; they are respected as, indeed, precisely what they are - wild animals.

I was so impressed with the centre - Roger and Debbie are wonderful people who have dedicated their lives to the chimpanzee and these animals in particular. I was only there for a short time, and I would have loved to stay longer, but I felt privileged to have helped in a small way with this fine work.

The trip to Washington really changed my life. I am not the adventurous type (my first plane flight was after my 50^th birthday) so when we drove to the airport, I did think what am I doing- flying across the world all on my own? And even though some of what I learned was hard to take, I would not have missed it for the world.

Seeing what Roger and Debbie have achieved made me want to do more for myself. Thanks to my daughter, who works for a wildlife organisation, I had previously been interested in animals welfare and environmental issues, but I was so inspired by what I saw in America that when I came home I could not wait to get started on some project or another

The slogan of the Earthwatch competition was ‘Think global, Act local’ with the bottom line being ‘make a difference’ - and that’s just what I did. As part of the competition entry, I had to suggest an environmental scheme that could be done here at home in my village. I came up with the idea of a scheme to turn kitchen vegetable waste into compost and 6 months later the scheme was up and running. - not only recycling rubbish, but also raising money for a local palliative Care Home (please check out www.kwic.org.uk for more information on our scheme activity). Since then I have been elected a Parish Counsellor and I am heavily involved in village matters and also I am now company secretary for our family business.

Before the Washington trip, I had done nothing like my present involvement in so many activities. I was the quiet one at the back who would sit and tremble! What Roger and Debbie from the CHCI have given me is the awareness that you have to act where and when you can. They have given me self respect in a most special way as I now know that, in my own small way, I have made a difference!

Pauline Bedford

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