A touching video captures a touching moment when a mother chimp named “Vanilla” looked up for the first time into the big sky. Vanilla had been confined to a tight cage for nearly 30 years, preventing her from raising her head and gazing at the sky.
Vanilla was born on July 22, 1994, at a biomedical research laboratory in New York, where chimps were routinely housed in cages of just 5’x5’x7′, similar to bird cages dangling from the ground.
Vanilla was transported to a wildlife sanctuary in 1995 and became one of the facility’s 30 chimps. She joined a small family group and stayed with them until the sanctuary closed in 2019, forcing the evacuation of roughly 480 animals, including 42 chimps. Vanilla was, fortunately, one of the final seven chimps to be evacuated, due to the FedEx Cares program. Her family and she were flown to Florida on a FedEx jet. Vanilla and her family were able to find a permanent home in Florida thanks to the generosity of many kind people.
Vanilla is now living a happy life. Vanilla’s reaction as she glanced up at the sky for the first time was captured by the non-profit organization “Save the Chimps” in a video. Her expression of surprise and excitement is absolutely sweet. Perhaps she was surprised to discover that there is a world outside of a cage.
Vanilla gets along well with the sanctuary’s other 18 chimps, according to primatologist Dr. Andrew Halloran. When she isn’t exploring the island with her friends, she can be seen on a three-story climbing platform, surveying her “new world” from a vantage point.
“Save the Chimps” is a non-profit sanctuary in the United States that is financed by the government. It was founded in 1997 and is a founding member of the North American Primate Sanctuary Alliance. It is recognized by the Global Federation of Animal Sanctuaries. The organization is most known for saving 266 chimps from the insolvent Coulston Foundation in 2002, the greatest single-chimp rescue in history. The organization was transformed into the world’s largest chimp sanctuary as a result of this rescue mission.
