It’s a chimp life at Jane Goodall Institute’s Chimpanzee Eden

LLika was kept for years in a dark brick cage in Luanda, Angola. It took her a very long time to adjust to other chimpanzees – she hadn’t seen one since her family was killed.

Nina was a little orphan, confiscated from bushmeat hunters in Sudan. She and the other little ones from Sudan – Thomas, Dinka, Zee and Charlie, still tend to stick together. A few others were rescued from circuses.

ZZac and Guida were chained to trees outside a nightclub in Luanda and were severely undernourished. They’d also been taught to drink alcohol and smoke cigarettes to amuse guests, and their fur was falling out. Zac’s recovery, in particular, was one of the most dramatic at the Jane Goodall Institute’s Chimpanzee Eden.

It’s unlikely that any of these chimpanzees can ever be released back into the wild, simply because conditions are perilous for them all over the continent.

But here they live a semi-wild chimpanzee life – foraging, interacting with each other in massive treed enclosures on this 1000-hectare nature reserve, eating healthy food. They are treated with constant kindness – something in short supply in their previous lives.