Learn about Sedgwick County Zoo’s newest Chimpanzee , Alizeti, in this Bonus Episode of the Sedgwick County ZooCast.
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CONTENT WARNING (00:00)
Hi, this is Emily Bishop, the host of the Sedgwick County ZooCast.
Before this episode gets started, we just want to give a quick content warning. This episode does touch on stillbirth and infant deaths in Chimpanzees. So, if those are topics that are potentially triggering for you, you might want to sit this one out.
Also, we’ve hit 1,000 streams across platforms, which is incredible, and we just want to say thank you for helping us hit that milestone. Whether you’ve been here since our first episode or this is your first time tuning in, we appreciate your support.
Okay, those are all the announcements we have. Let’s get into the episode.
INTRO (00:37)
Hello, and welcome to the Sedgwick County ZooCast
I’m your host, Emily Bishop, and today’s ZooCast will be a little different than usual- this is our first ever bonus episode.
In August, chimpanzee Alizeti was born here at Sedgwick County Zoo.
There has been a lot of excitement around her birth, as well as a lot of discussion and questions, especially on social media.
So today, we’re sitting down with Zoological Manager Danielle Decker and Zookeepers Devin Turner and Alicia Thomas to answer the questions we received the most.
Today, we’re giving you the Zoo Scoop on all things Alizeti.
INTERVIEW WITH ZOOLOGICAL MANAGER DANIELLE DECKER AND ZOOKEEPERS DEVIN TURNER AND ALICIA THOMAS (01: 20)
BISHOP: Well, thank you all so much for joining us here today on the Sedgwick County ZooCast. So, if just to get started, you could introduce yourself; talk about who you are and what it is you do here at SCZ.
DANIELLE DECKER: Hi, I’m Danielle Decker. I am the zoological manager of the Koch Orangutan and Chimpanzee habitat and Downing Gorilla Forest. I have been an animal caregiver for 29 years, mostly with primates, but with a lot of birds, reptiles, fishes. And now we’re getting the opportunity to raise Alizeti.
DEVIN TURTNER: I’m Devin Turner, I’m a zookeeper. I’ve been a keeper here for 22 years, and I spent a little over 20 of those with the chimpanzees, and orangutans. I’ve had the opportunity to help with six or seven human assisted rearing infants in the past, and we’re excited to see where Alizeti is gonna go.
ALICIA THOMAS: Hi, my name is Alicia Thomas and I have been a keeper here at Sedgwick County Zoo for about 11 years and seven of those have been with the chimpanzees and orangutans. And I have helped this exact same team with Alizeti, Kucheza, and Lily so.
ALIZETI’S BIRTH (02:28)
BISHOP: So, in August, we had a chimpanzee born, Alizeti. Very exciting. So, can you tell us about that?
THOMAS: Well, we came in at 7 a.m. It was just myself and our part timer, and we found Chuckie had already given birth. Everything went really well. She gave birth on her own naturally. And at the time, she was being very appropriate. And she had cleaned the infant off after the birth, but everything looked really good. So pretty uneventful overnight.
BISHOP: Yeah. Was this an expected pregnancy?
THOMAS: Yeah, we do test them regularly for pregnancy, especially the ones that we have breeding recs on, like, Chuckie. So, we have them all trained to urinate on cue so that we can test them at least once a month.
BISHOP: So, like you said, it was a very straightforward, very, for lack of a better word, “boring” sort of incident.
THOMAS: We love boring. Let me just tell you
BISHOP: It’s good; you want it to be boring.
Yeah, so was Alizeti like average sized for a baby chimp, in good health, just…
THOMAS: She was in really good health. She was actually on the small side for a chimp infant. They’re typically about three to four pounds when they’re born. And Alizeti was two pounds, 14 ounces. But her mom is also very petite, so…
BISHOP: So, it wasn’t… wasn’t a cause for alarm.
THOMAS: No, not at all.
BISHOP: So yeah, there were no complications or health concerns or anything?
THOMAS: Nope. No complications or anything at the birth. She was strong. She was very vocal. So, she was doing great,
HUMAN ASSISTED REARING AND WHY IT WAS NECESSARY FOR ALIZETI (03:53)
BISHOP: Great. Now, Alizeti has required human assisted rearing. So, what is that and why was it necessary.
DECKER: So, it’s a time when zookeepers- caregiver- animal caregivers have to intervene in the caring of an infant of any species. You know, maybe the female is not capable, or something’s wrong with the infant, or something of that factor. So, we’ll intervene at various levels. It’s really species to species, there’s a lot of parameters that we are given to abide by. But sometimes it’s just a gut reaction too of our observations and that individual situation. But we do a lot of conversations before each pregnancy of what’s acceptable and not acceptable maternal behavior. And that guides us with that decision also to intervene.
BISHOP: So, what behaviors were exhibited by Chuckie that led to this decision?
DECKER: Chuckie’s maternal experience was probably minimal to none. We were unsure what her skill sets were going to be. And like I said earlier, we prepared for so many scenarios, we sat down with our veterinary team, our animal curator, and made sure that we had all scenarios that we could potentially have the outcome to take care of. But it was determined based off of her maternal skills, as we observed her over time was to pull the infant for human assisted rearing.
BISHOP: Can you elaborate a little more on what the inappropriate maternal behavior was?
DECKER: Yeah, we did try to allow Chuckie to work through that. We observed her; she was pretty calm at first, but the main decision was the way Chuckie was reacting to Alizeti’s vocalizations. She became increasingly agitated and, and really unsure of herself for caring for the infant. You know, Chuckie wasn’t allowing the infant to cling to her abdomen like she should. Instead, she was carrying in her… in her hip pocket.
And what a hip pocket is for a chimpanzee is, they like to carry things in between their thigh and their hip bone. So, she was carrying the infant in that manner. So, you know, that wasn’t appropriate and would probably down the line allow her not to nurse. But it was more that she was putting it in the hip pocket. Alizeti would cry and she’d be a little- shake, shake her a little bit, throw her into her hip pocket to quiet her because she didn’t know how to appease Alizeti’s needs. And based off of that escalation, we decided to pull her to ensure her safety.
BISHOP: Yeah. So how did you separate Alizeti, from Chuckie?
DECKER: In our planning process, you know, immobilization was there if we needed to retrieve the infant. So, we prepared Chuckie for that; we prepared the veterinarian team of that scenario. So, it went really well we- they came in, we were able to immobilize her and safely get the infant from Chuckie.
BISHOP: How has Chuckie been faring since the separation?
DECKER: Well, as all animals are, they’re very resilient. So, she really resumed her normal behavior, because she didn’t really have that maternal instinct. So, she was back to socializing with the other group members and, and such. So, she’s back to her normal self pretty quickly.
BISHOP: She’s doing fine.
DECKER: Yeah, she’s great.
BISHOP: Yeah. Is it common to see inexperienced chimp mothers fail to care for their young?
DECKER: It can. Each female is their own individual. They have their own experiences. So, some may have an instinct to do it. But typically, apes need to learn how to be maternal. They, that helps them guide them through the maternal process. So, knowing that she had minimal experience, you know, we were prepared for, we were hopeful that instincts would hit in, but we were also very prepared for that instinct not to be there.
BISHOP: So, they- do they usually learn that just through observation with other chimps in the group?
DECKER: Correct. Correct. And unfortunately, we haven’t been able to give her that opportunity. And so, you know, we were hopeful that the minimal stuff that she has been able to see with the other females, but it just did not connect and Chuckie showed us that that maternal piece was not part of her behavior at this time.
BISHOP: So, when Alizeti does return to the troop, will Chuckie be involved in her care?
THOMAS: No, she will not. Since she’s not showing any maternal interest in Alizeti, we’re going to be giving her to Sukari as a foster. And they will have some time just the two of them to bond before we reunite them with the group.
BISHOP: Will like, Alizeti and Sukari be in like, with the same group as Chuckie? Or are they in separate groups?
THOMAS: Realistically, we’d like to have Chuckie out for a little while to establish that Alizeti is now going to be cared for by Sukari. Since they were all present for the birth, we know that they’re going to understand that Alizeti came from Chuckie. But we want to establish that Alizeti is now Sukari’s, so that there’s no confusion within the troop dynamics because of that.
BISHOP: So, in theory, like Chuckie would not recognize Alizeti as quote unquote, like “hers” anymore?
THOMAS: She would recognize that she’s the same infant that she gave birth to, but she doesn’t seem to think of Alizeti as “her baby,” if that makes sense.
BISHOP: Yeah.
THOMAS: So, it’s just a little bit different.
CHIMPANZEE TROOP DYNAMICS IN THE WILD AND AT SCZ (09:18)
BISHOP: Okay, so can you elaborate a little bit on troop dynamics within chimpanzees in general?
THOMAS: Yeah. So, chimpanzees live in large social groupings in the wild that can be anywhere from a dozen to 150 individuals. They do exist as one large community, but within that they break off into smaller subgroups. So, you’ll hear us talk about fission-fusion management a lot, where we kind of give individuals the opportunity to bounce back and forth between the groups that we run here to facilitate some different groupings. So, we’ll be able to pull Chuckie over to our secondary group of chimpanzees in order to facilitate that one-on-one time with her and Alizeti within the group.
BISHOP: Yeah. Can you explain a little bit more what fission-fusion is?
TURNER: Yeah, so fission-fusion, we have to… I’ll explain it in terms of what we do here at Sedgwick County Zoo just for ease. We have our main alpha, which is Moshi, and he has one group. And then we have our two older chimpanzees, Gomez and Mwana that can’t really go in with Moshi anymore. They just can’t get out of the way when there’s conflict. They’re older, they’re geriatric. So, everybody else pretty much can be flip-flopped back and forth between the two groups to give them different social opportunities.
SUKARI, ALIZETI’S FOSTER MOM (10:32)
BISHOP: So, like you said, Alizeti will have a foster mother when returning to the troop- Sukari. So, can you talk about Sukari and why she was selected to foster?
TURNER: Absolutely. Sukari is amazing. She is extremely intelligent, and she’s eager, eager to learn new things. She loves to train. Sukari’s his mother was Audra, who, if you are familiar with our chimps, she was our very first chimp. She was a very first chimp mom. And she had seven kids. So, she taught Sukari perfect maternal behavior. Sukari’s father was Marbles, who taught her to enjoy human interaction. So, she’s kind of a really… a really dynamic individual, and she enjoys training.
But she’s always really, really loved babies. When she was younger, she would try to lure her brothers away from her mother. And she was so excited when she’d get a chance to hold them. She’d go running away with them, and she would be so happy. And then when they went back to mom, she would just pout. So, we’re excited to give her the opportunity to be a mom. Sukari is also very socially savvy. So, she’s a good individual to teach, Alizeti, how to chimp.
BISHOP: Does Sukari have personal experience being a mother?
TURNER: So, she has quite a bit of infant experience. As far as her maternal experience, she gave birth in 2019. Unfortunately, her baby was stillborn. She… here we give the mothers a chance to work through the grieving process. So, Sukari exhibited all the maternal behavior she was supposed to, she tried to clear the airways and revive the infant. She tried to nurse the infant, she tried to rouse the infant. And she continued to do this for three days. Unfortunately, at that point, our veterinarians had requested that for the health of the group, we do retrieve that infant. And so, through some positive reinforcement training, we were able to do that.
She was distraught, though, once we finally did separate her from that infant. And she continued to look for that baby for a while. So unfortunately, she has not had the opportunity to have a live birth. We have been trying to, we have been hopeful that she would get pregnant since then. However, we have not been able to, she has not been able to get pregnant at this point. We’ve had our veterinarians and OBGYNs do reproductive workups on her, and everything looks good. We don’t have a reason for why she’s not getting pregnant. This is not unique, really, unfortunately to Sukari or our group. There is kind of a breeding depression in the population. So, other zoos are seeing the same thing. So, unfortunately, she hasn’t had that opportunity.
BISHOP: Yeah. So how old is Sukari?
TURNER: Sukari is 26.
BISHOP: How does that fall within kind of like average life expectancy of chimpanzees?
TURNER: So, the average life expectancy for a chimpanzee is about 45. So, she’s, she’s not considered a really young adult, but she’s certainly not an older- she’s middle aged.
BISHOP: Okay. So, if guests wanted to come and see Sukari here at SCZ, how might they be able to identify her from the other chimpanzees?
TURNER: Sukari is very large. She’s our largest female, she has a very deep brow ridge. And she’s probably got the lightest face out of any of our females, it’s not pink anymore, but the rest of our females have very black faces. So, she has the lightest face.
BISHOP: So, in the wild would a foster mother step in for a situation like this?
TURNER: That is hard to say. So, wild chimpanzees will adopt orphans and care for them. This is often done by maternal siblings. But it has been noted in situations where a maternal sibling is not available, another individual will take on an orphan. However, for adopting an infant this young, that is still nursing, unless that individual is lactating, they would not be able to feed the baby. So luckily here SCZ, even though Sukari is not lactating, we can work with her and Alizeti and make sure that she can be fed once she’s back with her.
Sukari has been involved for over a decade in our maternal training. So, she will take- we use a training doll, but she’ll bring the doll over when asked and she’ll put the doll up to the mesh at a bottle and she’ll hold the- the baby there to eat or simulate that. And so, we… Sukari has that skill set and at the same time we’re working with Alizeti getting her used to being on the mesh. And as she gets more comfortable with that, we’ll start offering her bottles through the mesh, so that when she’s in with Sukari, it’s a natural thing for her to come over. Sukari will bring her over. And then Alizeti will hold on to the mesh while we feed the bottle
BISHOP: Have Sukari and Alizeti met yet?
DECKER: They have met. Um, Sukari was present for the birth. And as Sukari always is, she was very, very interested. But she has been watching. She keeps an eye on her. And just recently, we’ve progressed to letting her touch Alizeti; that is done in a controlled environment and just to make sure everybody’s safe. Sukari is very excited. And she does not always understand why she didn’t get the baby the first day. Unfortunately, we just have to wait till Alizeti’s ready. But yes, they have met and that is going well.
WHY IS MAHALE NOT FOSTERING ALIZETI (16:34)
BISHOP: Good. Glad to hear it.
So, in 2020, to another chimp here at SCZ, Mahale, gave birth to Kucheza, who sadly passed away. So, why is Mahale not fostering Alizeti?
DECKER: Well, Mahale was a great mother. We know her maternal skills are fantastic. But we’re hopeful that she’ll get to get pregnant again and have her own. So, if we do give Alizeti to Mahale, that would postpone that. And every birth in our SSP population is important right now. And so, she is one of our backup plans. But we’re still very strongly confident with Sukari to take on this role. And then what’s exciting about that, then Alizeti will have a little cohort to play with. So, it’s the best of both worlds there.
BISHOP: Can you elaborate a little bit more on what the SSP is?
TURNER: Species Survival Plan – they manage the population of various animals in North America AZA zoos. So, we want to maintain genetic diversity. We want to maintain certain population size. So that group- that committee of people of all experts come together and look at the population from various aspects and make what’s called breeding recommendations. So that’s when we say breeding recommendations, it’s all planned. It’s not something that we choose to do. It’s all part of a bigger picture of caring for wild animals in zoos.
BISHOP: So, is Alizeti potentially related to Kucheza?
TURNER: In short, yes, probably. Based off of who Chuckie was with; which male she was with when we assume she conceived, most likely. But to confirm, we’ll do a DNA test. We do that with all of our chimps, because it is a multi-male society. We want to make sure we know those perfect genetics.
WHY HAS ALIZETI NOT BEEN REINTRODUCED TO THE TROOP YET? (18:24)
BISHOP: So why has Alizeti not been reintroduced to the troop yet?
TURNER: So, she has not reached the milestones in her development that we need her to reach to be successful. I had described how she needs to be able to eat. And we need her to be strong enough to hold herself up on the mesh and hold her neck up and latch on to the bottle strongly enough. And she’s not even two months old yet. So, she’s still working on… She’s getting stronger every day. But until we see those things, if we were to give her to Sukari, there’s… it would be very questionable on whether we would be able to provide her the nutrition she needs. So, we’re just waiting for her to see those. Also, that- the species survival plan does have guidelines established for rearing infants and preparing them for fosters. So, we are referencing those guidelines as well as monitoring their behavior, so…
BISHOP: Can you talk about those guidelines a little bit?
TURN: The guidelines over in place kind of how to care for the infant when it’s in an assisted- where a human insistent rearing situation. It also talks about what skill sets are necessary before you before you reunite them with chimps. And one of those is she’s, she needs to be able to make her way kind of towards the mesh. So, we’re working on her locomotion. She doesn’t have to go a long distance, but she does need to be able to kind of help Sukari, and then she has to be able to hold herself up. So, there’s some of those guidelines in there that just kind of let us know. She’s not quite ready yet. But when we start seeing those things, then we’ll… we’ll be able to move forward.
BISHOP: Do you have an idea on when she might be reintroduced?
TURNER: Well, we would like to see her introduced as soon as possible. So as soon as she’s developmentally ready, we will put her in there. As far as the date, we don’t have that yet. In the past zoos have… Typically it’s at least four to six months. However, if she meets those recommended- if she meets those developmental benchmarks before then we may be able to get her in with her family sooner. But it’s all dependent on her development. Sukari is ready, she is ready to go. It’s just waiting for Alizeti to be ready. Sukari was ready the day of. She is not understanding why she doesn’t have that baby yet.
DECKER: Just input that with the tactile that we’ve been able to allow Sukari to have with Alizeti, I think she also- my instinct goes, I think she knows it’s going to be hers now. And she seems to be a little more involved in- in watching and observing too this time, so we’re pretty excited about it.
THOMAS: The frequency of her checks has definitely increased since we started tactile.
BISHOP: She’s ready.
TURNER, THOMAS, and DECKER: Yes, yes. She’s ready.
DECKER: She’s been telling us she’s been ready for a long time.
TURNER: Yeah, the day. She was- she was like, “give me that baby.” And we’re like, she’s not quite ready.
BISHOP: We gotta wait.
TURNER: We gotta wait. But she’s impatient, so…
ALIZETI AND SUKARI (21:34)
BISHOP: Yeah. So how long will Alizeti be in Sukari’s care?
TURNER: So, in the wild, the young stay with and are dependent on their mothers for at least six years. Chimps are very social. And they have lifelong relationships. So as long as she’s in this group, they will have a mother-daughter relationship. Sukari was born in this group. So, until her mother passed away, she always had that mother-daughter relationship. It is normal for a female to leave their natal group when they’re adolescents. But it doesn’t always happen.
And that’s where the species survival plan comes in. When she’s old enough, and she’s more independent. Normally, females don’t get moved until they’re closer to 9-10 years old. Because we want to make sure that they’re mature enough. And hopefully, they’ve been able to see some maternal behaviors from their natal group. And then depending on genetics and the needs of the population as a whole, she may go to another facility, but we won’t know for years.
THE IMPORTANCE OF A CHIMPANZEE BIRTH (22:37)
BISHOP: Why is this important? Like, why is the birth of a new chimpanzee important?
TURNER: Well, the chimpanzee population at this time is decreasing. They look at the numbers of births we need every year to maintain the population. And just to maintain the population, we need so many births. And I don’t have that information in front of me right now. But I can tell you that we’re nowhere near it. So, the species survival plan, we really need to see some success, we need to have babies.
Unfortunately, for quite a while we didn’t have a lot of babies being born in the population, which has… you know, there are individuals like Chuckie, who haven’t been able to see maternal behavior. And our really great mothers are kind of aging out of that, that opportunity. So, they’re not able to have all the kids. So, we need this, we need the new generation to step up and start having kids, so…
DECKER: And it’s also important for our group, you know, age diversification. We have aging chimpanzees, our last infant born is 12-years-old now. And, you know, we should, you know, we need to start getting more individuals in our group to help with that fission-fusion. And that diversification just within our own group here at Sedgwick County Zoo.
TURNER: Yeah. Chimp groups love babies, it typically- chimp groups tend to be a little bit more peaceful; babies bring a lot of play, a lot of grooming, and different relationships and interactions from… and so they can kind of spark a lot of really great social situations for the group.
BISHOP: So, I was wondering, what has been your favorite part in all of this, in regards to Alizeti’s birth?
DECKER: There’re so many. One, that we have an infant and we’re excited. I think my big- biggest excitement is that Sukari is going to get to be a mother. Out of all this. You know, we’re happy that Alizeti is growing and thriving right now under our care, you know. But the best situation for Alizeti is with her chimpanzee family.
TURNER: I would agree with that. I’ve been with Sukari since she was just a little girl. And she has taken even the loss of Kucheza; she was not in with Kucheza. But she mourned him. She seems to take it probably the hardest out of our group when we have lost an infant. So, to have her have the opportunity to be a mom and I’m very excited for her. I’ve been wanting her to have a kid since she was younger because she just loved them so much. So, it was really heartbreaking. Probably one of the most difficult things in my career was watching her go through the loss of her infant so I’m watching her with Alizeti, and her get excited. And I’m very, I’m very hopeful for that. And that’s, that’s a lot of fun to watch.
THOMAS: I have to triple down, like getting Sukari to be a mom is going to be the most amazing part of this entire process. She has 100% grieved every single baby that we have lost. She’s taken them so hard, and it’s been difficult to watch her go through that grieving process for every single one, even the ones that were not hers.
BISHOP: Well, those are all the questions that I have. Is there anything that I didn’t ask that you’d like to speak on or comment?
TURNER: As long as you got in there that Sukari is the best.
DECKER: Yeah.
THOMAS: She’s pretty awesome… We can talk about how much Moshi loves her.
TURNER and DECKER: Yes, yeah.
THOMAS: He loves him some Alizeti.
THE OTHER CHIMPANZEES AND ALIZETI (26:21)
BISHOP: Yeah, tell us about Moshi.
THOMAS: Almost as much as Sukari, Moshi, our alpha is in there every single day checking on Alizeti to make sure he knows where she is. If he’s doing a display, and he sees that you have the infant back there, he’ll stop and just sit down like, “oh, the baby’s in here. I’m gonna be quiet now.” And he’ll come up to the mesh and he just gazes at her and one day he put his hand up there and she hooted at him and he got all excited and offered her kisses at the mesh. It’s very sweet. He’s absolutely enamored.
BISHOP: Is Moshi potentially the father considering he is the alpha in the group?
DEKCER, TURNER, and THOMAS: No
BISHOP: No?
DECKER: He’s probably not, but doesn’t mean he’s not.
BISHOP: Can you… Can you elaborate on that?
DECKER: Yeah. So based on our fission-fusion management, you know, Chuckie was moving between the male groups, the Moshi and Gomez, Mwana, and Mabusu. But based off of our timeline, and when we confirm pregnancy, most likely it was conceived when Mabusu- when she was with Mabusu, versus when she was with the Moshi group.
TURNER: So, it is unlikely that he is the father, but he- we don’t tell him that.
BISHOP: Yeah, he doesn’t know.
TURNER: He won’t know. He, he will think that that’s his. And he was really great. I will say that during the birth- I mean, we weren’t there for the birth. So let me rephrase that. When, when we arrived and Chuckie, still had her with her, our group was very appropriate. The girls were over there trying to get some baby time, seeing if she’d let them groom her and check her out. Sukari was trying to get as close as possible. As close as Chuckie would let her. Moshi was very interested. So… So yeah, they are all very excited I think about the baby.
HUMAN ASSISTED REARING (28:07)
DECKER: I think I want to add… Human assisted rearing, we take it very seriously. The best thing for any babies to be reared by it’s a mother, especially an ape infant. So, this was a hard decision, but a decision that we had to make for Alizeti’s safety.
BISHOP: Yeah, it was not made lightly.
DECKER: It was not made lightly. We gave her time to work through it. We were very hopeful she was going to work through it. She was pretty calm at first. But then, you know, at the end, we- we knew it was time. And it was multiple people making that decision and confirming that decision. And we all agreed on that.
BISHOP: Can you explain like what human assisted rearing looks like?
TURNER: So, we try to care for her much the same way as her mother would. So, chimpanzees are born able to cling- they’re supposed to cling to mom because sometimes a chimp’s gotta get up and go. So, so baby should be holding on. So, we wear special shirts, that- we have a wonderful volunteer who’s made those for us. And they have a lot of fleece fringe to simulate her hair- mom’s hair. So, she clings to us all the time. And that’s how she’s getting stronger. We’re… we always have to keep that in mind that that is an important skill set. They’re not humans. So as humans, we’re kind of like, I want to hold the baby, rock the baby, but it’s not a human.
So, we- we do make chimp sounds to her, we get her used to the movement that there would be from mom. For instance, if she’s clinging to mom’s chest and mom is walking on the ground, she’s going to kind of be upside down. So, we’re getting her used to those things. We’re also getting her desensitized to things that she will come in contact with in her environment, not just the- the mesh that we’ll need her to physically be on for food, but also different types of nesting materials. Get her used to the environment, get her used to the sounds, the smells, everything so that it’s as seamless as possible when she goes in with- with her chimp friends.
DECKER: Yeah, and even when we feed her, we have to have her in a special position like we… when we observe mother infant nursing, making sure that they’re in the right position. You know, we don’t hold her down to the side, she actually is more up right during feeding. So it’s constant, figuring out how to simulate how Sukari is going to be with her, you know, and simulating those opportunities as much as we can to prepare her for the foster.
TURNER: Luckily, we’ve seen great moms, including Mahale. So, they’ve taught us how to chimp mom. So, we can then pass that along to Alizeti.
BISHOP: Fantastic. So just the goal is always to mimic the chimp behavior as closely as possible?
TURNER: Yes. And something else that we do, we have a very small group of people. And we do that for a reason. One, it’s consistency in care, we are able to see if there’s any changes in behavior or health, because we are the same ones with her every day. So… So, we have a very small group of us. It’s also important this time of year because of cold and flu season. So, they are susceptible to all the illnesses and viruses that we get. So, we do limit how many people are around her. And, and because we- her safety, and her being successful, is our number one goal. That is, it’s not for us as much as we care for her. And she’s, she is adorable, but we go into it knowing that the purpose of this is to get her back with her chimp family as soon as possible.
DECKER: Yeah, cause the best caregiver is another chimpanzee to teach her all the chimp ways, where we will never be able to do that. To make sure she’s socially adaptable, and engaged in chimpanzee societies.
TURNER: And that will help her going forward, because eventually, hopefully, she’ll be a mom. So, her learning from a chimp mom how to mother is very important. And it will also help her socially be appropriate in the group. Animals that have been introduced later, even if they’re considered babies, if they’re introduced, you know, year, two years, the longer they’re with humans, we still see changes in their behavior much later in life. So, we can have females that are, well, or males that are 20, 30, 40 years old. And you can walk in and say “that one was raised by humans,” because there’s changes in their behavior. So that is something that all like, it’s the- all the ape species survival plans, when we have to do assisted rearing, the goal is to put them back with the, with the family as soon as possible. Because that really minimizes any of those behaviors that are, are not desirable.
DECKER: Yeah. And to add to that, you know, and we raised Kinali, one of our biggest concerns later in life for him, was being a behavioral non-breeder. That is one big thing with orangutan males. And so that was always in the back of our mind, you know, the socializing is always in the back of our mind, to create an environment that they can be successful later on in life. And we’re very happy that Kinali is doing great. He’s doing all things orangutan. So, we’re very proud of his situation. But you know, we have that, that we’re thinking about every day when we’re with Alizeti, and how we can provide her anything to make her successful.
HOW YOU CAN HELP WITH ALIZETI’S CARE (34:14)
BISHOP: So, on social media, every time we post a photo or video of Alizeti, we get tons and tons of comments that are like, “how can I help? Like, how can I be involved with this?” So, is there a way that people can help out and be involved?
DECKER: There definitely is. It takes money to care for Alizeti above and beyond what we already do. So, there will be an opportunity for a financial donation. To help with the cost of this, you know, we do have to buy formula to feed her. We have a lot of equipment and supplies that we need to give her. So, week- It can range between $200 to $500 a month or more in caring for her. And it’s going to be a long term feeding her so we’ll have to buy formula for the next year or two. So, any financial donation that we can receive to support her will be amazing.
BISHOP: Anything else you guys want to say or comment?
THOMAS: I do want to take this opportunity to thank our community for all of the outpouring of support we’ve had through all of these processes over the past year. We had a rough couple months there and the support from our community and how much people have learned to love chimps has really warmed our hearts and helped us through all of those hard times as well. And we’re extra hopeful for our community just as much as for our chimpanzee troop.
OUTRO (35:33)
BISHOP: Thanks for listening to the Sedgwick County ZooCast.
For more information on chimpanzee Alizeti, be sure to follow us on social media, which is linked in the description of this episode. And check out our website: scz.org.
I’ve been Emily Bishop and we hope you enjoyed this bonus episode of The Sedgwick County ZooCast.
