Soft grass, cool pool in store for LR Zoo’s chimpanzees

On a warm June day, chimpanzees lounge in the shade of their Little Rock home. It’s a big home - 10,000 square feet with indoor rooms and a spacious yard, complete with a climbing structure and a tree. And it’s a home that is about to get a $250,000 makeover.

The Little Rock Zoo’s chimp-exhibit renovation is in the planning stages, according to Mark Shaw, the zoo’s general curator.

Plans include adding a running stream with a shallow pool, reconfiguring the exhibit’s climbing apparatus and redoing the landscaping. Work was completed in mid-June on a covering to shade the pedestrian walkway, which cost the zoo an estimated $175,000. The funding for both projects will come from sales tax revenue and deferred maintenance money, Shaw said.

The chimpanzee enclosure, which is part of the larger Great Apes exhibit, was built in 1988. It is home to six chimpanzees and includes an outdoor area that visitors can observe as well as indoor rooms out of public view.

“All in all, this has been quite a good area,” said Great Apes keeper Ann Rademacher. “Quite spacious.”

But the exhibit needs new landscaping, Rademacher said. Years of erosion have exposed chunks of concrete, dirt and rocks. Besides the solitary tree, saltbush is the only vegetation that grows anymore, and it has taken over.

“The erosion is really terrible,” she said. “We like a natural look, but this invasive weediness is difficult for [the chimpanzees] to navigate through and difficult to see them in.”

The new landscaping will be similar to recent renovations at the zoo’s tiger exhibit, which also had erosion problems, Shaw said. The ground in the tiger exhibit was regraded, and rock from the old exhibit was used to build retaining walls, he said.

Rademacher said she wants the chimpanzees to have soft grass to walk on and a variety of vegetation to navigate through. And she expects the chimpanzees will enjoy having a stream.

“I really hope that the experience for the chimpanzees and for the people will be a positive one,” Rademacher said.

The renovation doesn’t yet have a start date, but the work is expected to take 60-90 days, she said, during which the chimps will mostly stay in the indoor holding rooms. A connection between the holding rooms will be built to allow the chimps more space during the renovation time. The zookeepers will also ensure that the animals have things to keep them occupied, she said.

Usually, they keep busy by fishing for treats - like peanut butter - in a termite mound, Rademacher said.Sometimes they also hunt wild rabbits that get into the exhibit. And, from time to time, they fling rocks.

“The goal is to not have any rocks for them to throw,” Shaw said.

Chimpanzees don’t live in nuclear families like humans do, Rademacher said. They live in multimale social groups and have life expectancies of 60-70 years.

The Little Rock Zoo is unique in that it is hometo a chimpanzee that was raised as a pet. Most zoos won’t consider taking in a chimpanzee with that background, Rademacher said. The animal, now 11, had to learn that he was a chimp and not a human, she said. He’s had to learn chimpanzee behavior.

“It’s a long, slow process,” Rademacher said, “but he has done very well.”

Zoo visitors can see the chimpanzees and the other primates in the Great Apes exhibit at feeding time every day at 1:30 p.m. The keepers throw food to the animals from the pedestrian walkway and talk with visitors. It’s a way to break up the day and to make sure the animals are visible, Rademacher said.

It’s hoped that after the renovations, the chimps will choose to be out in the open more often, rather than hanging out in the hidden or less visible areas, she said.