Chimpanzee in the zoo is happy

Ingrid Holvoet describes a chimpanzee’s mental world based on the picture below.


Is feeling good, is contented. Has food every day, the food simply is there, lives a carefree life. No longer needs to look for food like he used to, no longer needs to fight for a piece of food with other monkeys.

By day he walks around a little in the space he lives in, he climbs a bit in the trees, or he swings through the space (I can’t clearly distinguish what he makes use of to move, I don’t get a clear image of this), then he eats a banana, sometimes he feels the sun on his belly and he enjoys this. Now and then people pass by, he acts in defiance of them, he is used to them. Usually he doesn’t pay attention to them.
 
He is alone in a room and at some distance (in another room) there are other chimpanzees. About three. He has no contact with them with them. The fact that he knows there are more other monkeys has a reassuring effect on him though. There are more others like him, he’s not the only one of his kind. For the rest he can do without contact with other monkeys, he feels pretty happy by himself.
 
Now and then the keeper brings food, replenishes the food containers. He waits till the keeper is gone and then he goes to the food to eat.
 
And like this the day goes by. Having a walk on the ground, eating a little, having a swing in the air, watching the people passing by now and then, sleeping a little with the sunbeams on his belly, he’s quite happy lthis way. Things may stay like this for his part. He doesn’t need any company.
 
His (or perhaps her) life is much better now than it used to be, when it was a daily struggle to gather food, and where chimps within a group were hostile towards one another, and where some chimps who approached a small group that was eating were chased away. It was everyone for himself. There was no sharing. Some chimpanzees had all the food and others had little. He (or she) managed on his own.
 
He didn’t mix much in the group, he kept somewhat at a distance from most monkeys. There used to be a lot of hostility and clique formation. Some monkeys were excluded, fortunately he wasn’t. Anyhow he wasn’t very keen on contact with other monkeys altogether. Sometimes he used to hang around with some other monkeys whom he fairly clicked with, and then they sat together in a group, and sometimes they used to run after each other a little (at a small distance), and they searched flees with one another.
 
But as much he liked being by himself, with the group though, but somewhat sitting on the edge, and sitting at some distance from the others, and watching the others.

And without thinking - this is something I (Ingrid Holvoet) feel with this and with other monkeys too, they merely observe and do things, but they don’t think. Yet they can learn things being repeated in front of them, they can learn by seeing others doing things, they have a memory, but they don’t reason.
 
On the other hand, I have also found pictures of chimpanzees that actually are intelligent and do reason and think and understand things. Like Chimp Clint who is described on this website.



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