So last week we headed over to IKEA to pick out furniture for the chimps – OK, not really. All of the furniture in the chimp building is custom-built and is quite heavy-duty, as you see in this photo.
7 bedroom, 1 bath, large living room, and 1/2 acre backyard - must see!
This is the largest room in the building (about 1000 square feet and over 20 feet tall) and its filled with benches for chimps to sit and sleep on. There are also steel nests (in the upper right) that they can fill with hay and nap in. The posts and walls have steel rings anchored to the to attach ropes and hammocks too. Eventually this room will be filled with 30 inches of pine bark mulch, creating a natural, soft floor indoors.
Before you are too harsh about our decorating skills, let me explain that the first rule of animal exhibit design is function first. Concrete is easy to clean and paint has a tendency to chip under the strain of everyday cleaning and chimps with time on their hands. All of the caging is galvanized steel, which won’t rust after repeated washings (and other chimp bodily fluids I won’t mention here). Once we hang some toys and hammocks the room will be much more colorful, which is actually important to chimps since they see the same color spectrum we do.
Chimps arrive one week from today!
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