Forty-six-year-old chimpanzee Chloe recently recorded a day in the life of an Oregon Zoo animal, using the GoPro camera provided to her by a zoo staffer. This included new views of the zoo, its enrichment program and, of course, the seemingly cavernous interior of Chloe's mouth.
It also gave new views of what this one chimpanzee likes to do with her day, which is useful learning for science and a zoo.
So, who is Chloe? She is the zoo's oldest chimpanzee (of four) and recently became her troop's leader. This means she gets first dibs on food and other fun, signaling to the other apes to keep their distance while she digs in. As dominant chimpanzee, Chloe also quickly gathered up the GoPro put inside the chimp enclosure by keepers and carried it with her, recording the day's doings.
"Chloe immediately went to it and kind of showed us a 'day in the life of Chloe,'" keeper Colleen Reed said. "It was able to give us a really, really unique opportunity to see what she does during the day and what she actually enjoys. These behaviors are things that keepers see every day, but never before from this perspective."
Digging into technology was not new for Chloe. Before this, she had been able to experiment with an iPad's camera function, moving her long and wrinkled fingers in a mesh barrier to reach a screen held by a keeper. She was also able to toggle between two photo modes, selfie and outward-facing.
Here's an interesting possible learning from the day-in-the-life filming: Reed thinks Chloe may have tried to switch the GoPro from outward-facing to selfie mode too, at a few points. The chimp also got more involved with the motion camera than expected. "I knew she would be curious and kind of turn it around back and forth," said Reed. "What I didn't expect her to do necessarily was figure out how to turn it on and off."
Reed worked previously with New York-based Orangutan Outreach, and still puts together that nonprofit's Apps for Apes program. This involves using iPads to give orangutans and chimps stimulating enrichment.
In case you're wondering, yes, Chloe is fairly old, but she is lively and, clearly, a leader. Median life expectancy for chimpanzees in captivity is said to be 31.7 years for males and 38.7 years for females, according to Lincoln Park Zoo's ChimpDATA. The numbers are about the same for chimps in the wild. The in-captivity numbers were based on 35 years of records from Association of Zoos & Aquariums (AZA) institutions.
Chloe has been described as playful and a food lover. In the video, she gathers up and enjoys some ice treats.
"Just like people, if you're sitting in a restaurant and all of a sudden you hear somebody literally grunt, that's pretty much what chimps do too," said Reed. "They just get a little more excited about it."
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