Rescued chimps inspire their rescuers

By Rachael Bale, ANIMALS Executive Editor

You know those bumper stickers of a dog paw print that say, “Who rescued who?” You see them on the cars of dog adopters, who want to tell the world that rescuing a dog has enriched their lives as much as they’ve enriched the dog’s.

Now imagine that, but with chimps.

That’s how staff and volunteers (pictured above) at the Lwiro Primates Rehabilitation Center, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, talk about their work in a new story for National Geographic by Paul Steyn. The chimps they care for are orphans—their mothers killed for wild meat. They often arrive traumatized and in need of intensive care.

Some of their caregivers are dealing with their own traumas. Zawadi Balanda, as a child and into her teens, endured repeated brutal assaults by rebel soldiers that eventually required reconstructive surgery.

When she first started working at Lwiro, she barely spoke to colleagues and was afraid of the chimps. But once assigned as a surrogate mother to a tiny, helpless chimp named Busakara, she learned how to communicate with her, groom her, and make her laugh. She washed her and spent nights with her.

As Busakara recovered, Balanda’s confidence grew, too. She now looks after older chimps and has enrolled in a veterinary science course. Busakara is living independently in a forested enclosure with other chimps. (Busakara will likely be returned to the wild, while others who can’t will live permanently in large enclosures designed to mimic nature as much as possible.)

The chimps, Steyn writes, have become models of resilience for their caretakers, just as their caretakers have helped them survive and recover. (Pictured above, caregiver Mireille Miderho Oziba sits with chimps Mara and Felix as they sleep.)

Baby chimps on a plane: Read the story—and see photos

Learn more: See related educational resources about chimpanzees—click here to access the National Geographic Society Resource Library for educators, students and lifelong learners.

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TODAY IN A MINUTE

No more fur: Pop singer Billie Eilish persuaded design label Oscar de la Renta to stop selling fur in its stores as a condition for working with her. Eilish wore a nude tulle dress from the brand (pictured above) to the Met Gala, the fashion industry’s version of the Super Bowl. Chief executive Alex Boren told the New York Times he made the change to get rid of fur, long debated at the company, after listening to Eilish, who is a vegan and animal rights activist.

Gorillas with COVID-19: Thirteen western lowland gorillas at Atlanta’s zoo tested positive for the virus, and are being treated, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports. They will get the Zoetis coronavirus vaccine developed for animals, which Nat Geo reported was first used in February on infected great apes at the San Diego Zoo. The vaccine is now being used on bears, baboons, hyenas, and tigers in U.S. zoos as well.

Dolphins killed: For hundreds of years, fishermen would drive hundreds of dolphins into a fjord in the remote Faroe Islands, kill them, and distribute the meat to locals for consumption. This year’s hunt, however, rounded up a pod of more than 1,400 dolphins and killed them—the biggest slaughter on record, the BBC reports. After widespread revulsion, fishermen in the North Atlantic territory acknowledged they underestimated the size of the pod—and the killing was excessive. “Somebody should have known better,” the chairman of the Faroese Whalers Association, Olavur Sjurdarberg, told the BBC.

Still loose: Animal control officials in Maryland are still trying to catch the zebras that escaped a farm two weeks ago. The feeding station they erected failed, and now they’ve put up an eight-foot corral around the area where the zebras have been feeding. "They are animals that you just can't walk up and put a lasso on," Chief Rodney Taylor from Prince George’s Animal Control told NBC Washington.

Heat prompts culling: The megadrought and heatwaves in the Sun Belt are causing farmers to slaughter animals at alarming rates due to exhaustion, Slate reports. The average feeder cattle will find ideal living conditions at about 25 to 65 degrees Fahrenheit. At temperatures between 80 and 100 degrees, they quickly become exhausted, and at temperatures above 100, they will die.

INSTAGRAM OF THE DAY

You are looking at a leafy sea dragon: Really. These animals can be found only on the southern and western coasts of Australia. They belong to the same family as seahorses, called Syngnathidae. However, unlike seahorses, these animals grow much larger, normally eight to 10 inches (20 to 25 centimeters). It's hard to photograph leafy sea dragons because they tend to be quite shy. The biggest challenge is finding them, photographer Nadia Aly tells us. “They blend in so perfectly with their surroundings, they could be right in front of you and you might not know it!”

Related: The dark side of male pregnancy 

THE BIG TAKEAWAY

How spiders get their strong bite: Scientists discovered it’s a combination of metal atoms and natural proteins that are behind the super-strong jaws of spiders and some other tiny animals. Many of these animals are using their teeth or stingers in life-or-death situations. Those heavy element biomaterials also could inspire engineers to create new products, such as smaller cellphones and more robust medical devices, Nat Geo reports. (Pictured above, a captive regal jumping spider shows off its iridescent fangs.)

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IN A FEW WORDS

THE LAST GLIMPSE

Creatures of the night sea: Zooplankton—such as a jellyfish (left) and a larval lionfish surrounded by tiny, shrimplike amphipods (right)—often swim from the deep toward the surface at night to feed. Diving in the open ocean after sundown is “a grandstand seat to a parade of the most strange and exotic creatures in the world,” says photographer and Nat Geo Explorer David Doubilet in the October issue of National Geographic.

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