Vanilla, a rescued chimpanzee who cried with ecstasy when she first saw the sky, is now prospering in her new home in Florida, according to one of her keepers there.
According to Dan Mathews, the sanctuary's director of events and special initiatives, the lovely chimpanzee had "never felt grass beneath her feet" before arriving, according to Daily Mail.
An Adorable Reunion Captured on Video
The cute video captures the moment alpha male Dwight embraced Vanilla as she ventured outdoors into the open, gazing up at the sky in awe.
The chimpanzee spent her first two years in an experimental lab in New York before being transferred to a Californian rescue facility where she was kept in an enclosure with a gated ceiling that prevented her from plainly seeing the sky.
She was then relocated to the Save the Chimps sanctuary, where she now shares a three-acre island with 18 other chimpanzees and has access to a variety of grassy hills and climbing platforms to explore with her new family.
In the popular video, Vanilla is also greeted by the other monkeys as she continues to stare in awe at the sky. She may also be seen galloping around the island with abandon and sitting with her new family while they groom one another.
Vanilla's Living Conditions
Dr. Andrew Halloran, a primatologist with Save the Chimps, took the video while describing Vanilla's living conditions in California, "In California, Vanilla lived with a handful of chimps inside a chain-link fence cage with no grass and very little enrichment," he said.
Dr. Halloran claimed that while Vanilla is not exploring with the other chimpanzees on her island, she is perched atop a three-story climbing platform, taking in her brand-new environment.
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Vanilla's Journey
Vanilla lives on one of 12 islands that are connected by narrow waterbeds and are described by the Save the Chimps rescuers as autonomous, inquisitive, and intelligent. This enables the sanctuary to provide the chimps with their very own outside play area.
Vanilla was born and raised in the now-defunct Laboratory for Experimental Medicine and Surgery in Primates (LEMSIP) in New York, where she was kept until 1995 in diminutive, five-square-foot cages suspended from the ceiling that were reminiscent of bird cages.
The building had no windows, therefore, the six cages were situated on opposite walls so that the chimpanzees could see one another yet cruelly be too far apart to have any contact.
Vanilla and the other chimpanzees kept there in captivity were confined to their small cages all day because there was no outdoor holding or exercise area.
According to a visitor who witnessed the appalling conditions within the prison firsthand, this made them anxious and afraid.
She was one of 30 chimpanzees taken to the Wildlife Waystation in California when she was relocated from LEMSIP at the age of two.
There, she joined a tiny family group that lodged in a fenced-off enclosure. Despite a little improvement over the experimental lab, the chimpanzees were still confined to tiny enclosures with no opportunity to move freely in the wild.
She was among 480 other creatures, including 42 chimpanzees, that lived at the shelter and were rehomed when it closed in 2019.
At the Wildlife Waystation, Vanilla shared a home with the Sunshine Seven, another chimpanzee family. They had been living in cramped quarters, which the rescue shared images of, before being brought to the Center for Great Apes. The primates appeared unhappy as they sat in their cramped cages.
Vanilla was one of the final seven animals to be relocated from the Californian rescue center. The animals were kept in cages until they could travel across the country to their new home in Florida. Sunrise Seven was the name of the tiny family.
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