Feeding chimpanzees

SOROCABA SANCTUARY

For chimpanzees, food time is the best one on the day. Even more during cold days. At Sorocaba Sanctuary they have three meals every day. The first one, composed by fruits and vegetables, is very early. After 9 am, they receive the most complete meal, as it can be seen on the photos. It includes a hot dish, milk with fruits, bread, milk desserts, yogurt, cake, fruit and soy juices and some more appreciate fruits, like grapes, pears, persimmon etc.

The hot dish changes everyday and it can be chicken, pasta, sausages with ready sauces, meat and chicken hamburgers with mayonnaise sauce, chicken nuggets etc.

Each chimpanzee has their preferences. Charles, for instance, cries in happiness when there is past and Billy, when there is mayonnaise. There was a day that Charles ate five pots of pasta, because his neighbors – Sam and Rakker – did not touch them and he asked me to give them to him. After his dental treatment, Pongo has a five-time bigger appetite. He is always waiting for the hot dish and takes everything to eat on the air opened enclosure.

After midday, we distribute the desserts, jelly and yogurts to be eaten by the end the day. The females use to keep fruits to eat at the end of afternoon and we can see Carol, Tata, Tuca and Judy taking bananas and other fruits to be eaten before sleep. Maybe this is a practice inherited of the times they starve at circuses and zoos, where the food was reduced and controlled – and where they had to eat everything gave to them.

Today, for the 50 chimpanzees we have in the sanctuary we spend more than 1500 liters of fat milk and 2200 liters of fruit and soy juices per month. Not to mention more than 800 liters of several kinds of yogurts.

Bread is something that can not lack. Usually we buy semolina or regular Bread and vary between these two kinds in the meals. There are some chimpanzees that do not mind for bread, but for others, like Rakker and Sam, bread is the favorite food and they must receive double quantities.

We participate of four days in the week of the feeding of the chimpanzees. And we are pleasured to see how they enjoy and appreciate a good meal, just like us, and consider meals one of the pleasures of humanity.

Dr. Pedro A. Ynterian
President, GAP Project International