Short Wave - Chimp Haven Welcomes New Retirees

Episode Date: February 4, 2022

In 2015, the National Institutes of Health ended invasive biomedical research on its hundreds of chimps. Since then, it's been gradually moving the animals to a sanctuary in Louisiana called Chimp Haven. NPR science correspondent Nell Greenfieldboyce joins the show to talk about the NIH's effort to retire research chimps and why it's complicated.Read more of Nell's reporting about chimp retirement:https://n.pr/3HsgmLq, https://n.pr/3AW3smo and https://n.pr/3sbHyaVEmail the show at [e-mail] pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. If you go to northern Louisiana, you might hear some unusual sounds echoing over the pine forest. This is Chimp Haven, the largest chimpanzee sanctuary in the world. I'm Lauren Summer, science correspondent with NPR. And while I have not been to Chimp Haven, NPR's Nell Greenfield voice has. Hey, Nell. Hey there. Okay, so tell me about Chimp Haven. How many chimps are living there? They have 330 chimps. Oh, wow. Okay. And how did all these chimps end up in Louisiana? Where are they from?

Mostly research institutions. So Chimp Haven is the official sanctuary for former research chimps owned or supported by the National Institutes of Health. And a couple of NIH chimps arrived recently that are actually really special. Their names are pancake, a female, and Huey, a male. They're both in their 30s. Hi. Oh, hi, Huey. Hi. Oh, I'm so glad you're here at Chimpaven now. Oh, hi. That's Amy Fultz speaking a little chimp there. She's a co-founder of Chimp Haven, and she knew Pancake and Huey in the 1990s when, you know, this idea of a chimp sanctuary was just a dream. And she was working at the research center in Texas where the two

chimps have been living until now. We've all aged, obviously, in different ways. Both pancake and I have put on a little bit of weight. And Huey's way more devoted to pancake than I recall, very attached to her, but that makes sense after 20 years of them being together. Okay, that's quite a reunion if she hasn't seen these chimps in, what, two decades? That's right, yeah. So Chimp Haven sent me the audio of her feeding them carrots and cucumbers in this little reunion. Oh, what a good boy. So for now, Huey and Pancake are in this building called the Welcoming Center. It's kind of this separate space to let them get acclimated.

Oh, there's all my neighbors. Neighbors are getting their breakfast this morning, too, it sounds like. And if all goes well, Pancake and Huey will eventually get integrated into a social group. They already know some chimps at Chimp Haven. I mean, Huey even has a son there. Oh, wow. Okay, so if there are hundreds of chimps at Chimpaven, What's special about these two chimps?

They're special because of what their arrival means for the entire process of retiring government-owned and managed research chimps. In 2015, the NIH ended invasive biomedical research on its hundreds of chimps. And it's been gradually moving them to Chimp Haven. With Huey and Pancake's arrival, all of the NIH chimps that are currently eligible to be at this retirement sanctuary are actually there. Okay, currently eligible. That sounds like there might be more chimps still out there, you know, maybe in research facilities that are not eligible. Yeah, the NIH has 85 or so like that. So are they ever going to the retirement sanctuary?

That is the big question that people are fighting over right now. Okay. Today on the show, we're going to talk about the efforts to retire the NIH's research chimps and why it's unexpectedly complicated by the fact that a lot of these chimps are elderly. We'll look at which chimps have made it to the sanctuary, which chimps have stayed behind, and what might happen next. You're listening to Shortwave, the Daily Science podcast from NPR. Okay, now let's stop for a moment and just orient people here. There's still a lot of biomedical research on primates, right? Just not chimps.

Exactly. So there are tens of thousands of research monkeys in the U.S. like Rhesus macaques. Think about monkeys with tails. There are a lot fewer chimpanzees in this country. like only 1,300 altogether. And a lot of those chimps live in zoos or were former pets. And so, you know, in terms of what kind of medical research was done with chimps in the past, I mean, over the years, it was all kinds of things like research on a hepatitis vaccine, you know, developing a vaccine for that virus or, you know, research on prions. You know, those are those proteins that cause mad cow disease. Chimps were used to show that they could cause an infectious brain disease. But animal welfare, advocates argued that chimps should get special ethical consideration because they are so biologically closely related to people. And a decade ago in 2011, an independent assessment done for the NIH concluded that most biomedical research being done on chimps wasn't scientifically necessary.

You know, there were other options. Okay. So the NIH agreed with that and they decided to stop? Yeah, they put restrictions in place and slowed things down and eventually ended this kind of work with chimps all together in 2015. Okay. So when the NIH decided that, it still had these kind of hundreds of chimps living at research facilities, right? And the plan was to move them to Chimp Haven. So, you know, they started work on that. The trouble was there wasn't enough room at the sanctuary. So Chimp Haven had to expand its grounds to let it take on more and more chimps, you know, which has been doing. And then there was this other problem. It turns out that a lot of NIH-owned chimps are elderly and medically frail. Oh, wow. Okay. I mean, how old can a chimp get? The oldest chimps at Chimp Haven right now are like 61, 62. They were collected in the wild from Africa. Wow. So, okay, Chimp Haven really is a kind of chimp retirement community then, because it sounds like they can live almost as long as people. And they get the same kinds of diseases, right?

I mean, that's why they were used in biomedical research. I mean, they can get heart disease, diabetes, kidney disease, arthritis. And the concern is, will the stress of moving to an entirely new home with new people and new chimps affect chronically ill animals in a way that could harm them and potentially shorten their lives? I talked with James Anderson. He's an NIH official who's been managing chimp retirement. The transfer process can be quite dangerous. not just the physical stress of anesthesia, putting the animal on the truck, but also the social readjustment of entering a new community. And that can go on for months after arriving at the sanctuary.

He says there's some chimps around 75 with health problems that make it unwise to move them. So does that mean they'll just stay in the research facilities? Like no research will be done, but they'll live out their lives there? Yeah. Just like they've been for the last seven years or so. And the NIH says these places are the chimps familiar homes. Where they're well taken care of, the caretakers there have known them in many cases for decades. They're social programs for them. So we got an idea of what Chimp Haven is like, but what are these research facilities like? Like, have you, have you been to any? Yeah, I have. I've also seen pictures. I mean, one I visited, had some enclosures that were similar to some of the enclosures I saw at Chimp Haven, frankly. I mean,

And, you know, they typically have access to the outdoors, climbing equipment. But generally speaking, the environments are less naturalistic and the social groups are smaller. So, you know, maybe just chimps living in a pear like Huey and pancake. And meanwhile, at Chimp Haven, you know, there's these forests, little forests that are surrounded by moats. And you might see like, you know, 20 chimps wandering around together in the trees. Hmm. Is that close to how chimps might actually live together in the wild? Like, how many would you actually see in the wild together?

They can be in big groups, you know, as many as 100 or more. I mean, just like with people, the social world is really important to chimps. And so in research facilities, you have some NIH chimps like Huey and pancake that have lived together for years and years and have become devoted to each other. Anderson says that can make things difficult. We have some cases where there's a frail old chimp which is not going to move, but it's socially bonded to an animal that could probably move. He says there are nine chimps like that that seem healthy enough to probably go to Chimp Haven, but they have to stay where they are for now because they have to be a companion to their sicker buddy. Until the frail one passes and then we'll reconsider, okay, can they move now?

Hmm. But that could take potentially years, right? And maybe by the time that happens, maybe that companion chimp is elderly or is sick itself. Right. And, you know, some people are just really not buying this idea that doesn't, and dozens of chimps are too sick to be moved. Oh, really? Yeah, some animal welfare groups have sued the NIH. One of them is the Humane Society of the United States. Kathleen Conley is their vice president for animal research.

And she says, if you look at the medical summaries of chimps that have been deemed too fragile to go to the sanctuary. A lot of them will say, well, we're concerned that there'll be, you know, a sudden heart attack if the chimps are moved. Chimpanzees are notorious for cardiac problems anyway, so you could be completely healthy chimpanzee at 16 years old and die from a heart of tech, quite frankly. So, you know, to this, that's not a reason to keep them sitting in the labs. She says it's possible chimps' health could improve at Chimp Haven. Chimp Haven just has the expertise to provide that higher level of

welfare. And, you know, in addition to the welfare of the chimps is the cost. She points out that supporting a chimp at Chimp Haven is significantly less expensive for the NIH. Huh. Why is that? Because Chimp Haven is required to raise some of its own funding. So there, it costs the NIH like $26 a day to support one animal. While, meanwhile, at one research facility, it costs $97 a day. And at another facility, it's like $124 a day. So it's more. Okay.

So doing the math, you know, $100 a day, that's like $36,000 a year. Yeah, that's per animal. But, you know, their care is complicated. Chimps can be big, strong animals, and they need a lot of intellectual stimulation and social interaction. And if they're older and sick, they need medical management too. When I was at Chimp Haven, you know, they had pharmacies, kitchens, closets full of toys, a laundry for the chimp's blankets. You know, there's basically a staff of 50 or so that's just like chimp servants who do nothing but feed them and clean up after them and entertain them and give them medicine, etc. So what will happen next in this kind of whole controversy?

over the left behind NIH chimps. You said there was a lawsuit. Yeah, over a few dozen chimps at a primate facility in New Mexico. That lawsuit was filed last year and will be litigated in the months ahead. And in the meantime, things have sort of slowed down just a bit at Chimp Haven. Amy Fultz told me that since 2017, they've brought in an average of 36 NIH chimps a year. And now that Huey and Pancake have arrived, you know, that's the last of the currently eligible NIH chimps.

It's sort of a new phase, I would say, for Chimpeven, where we've been very focused on retiring the NIH chimpanzees over the past few years. And now we have an opportunity to sort of look forward to some other chimpanzees that may be in need. Others that might be in need. So who are these other chimps? Were they part of research labs that weren't NIH labs? Yeah. So specifically, she was thinking about a place called Wildlife Way Station outside of Los Angeles. It had 42 chimps.

Most of them were former lab research chimps, you know, from a place called the Laboratory for Experimental Medicine and Surgery in Primates. That was a New York University research facility. Anyway, the Wildlife Way Station ran out of funding unexpectedly and had to close its doors a few years ago. And people have been raising money to get these chimps to sanctuaries. And Chimp Haven is hoping to take 11 of them in the next year. So it seems like the fallout from this era of chimp research is still. still ongoing. But now what it's happening for chimps, has it changed the conversation for research on other primates? Well, that's a huge question. Obviously, animal welfare advocates have a lot of

concerns about, say, Rhesus macaque monkeys, too. And there's way more of them currently being used in biomedical research. So you can imagine, that means there's a lot more stakeholders involved in that. And with chimps, from the time the National Institutes of Health got that independent report on scientific need for biomedical research with chimps to today, it's been over a decade. Yeah. Wow. Okay. Well, keep us posted on what happens next. And now, thanks for giving us this update on the state of those NIH research chimps. This story was edited by Giselle Grayson, produced by Chloe Weiner. Catherine Seifer, check the facts. The audio engineer was Stu Rushfield. I'm Lauren Summer, and you've been listening to Shortwave, the Daily Science podcast from NPR.