Love Stories: The Galentines

Valentine’s Day is almost here, and love is in the air at Chimp Haven! One of the wonderful things about life at the sanctuary is the friendships, families, bromances, and, yes, even romances, that develop between the retirees. We hope you enjoy a few of our favorite recent love stories.

Chimp Haven has no shortage of strong, bold chimp ladies, so when it comes to enviable girl gangs, the sanctuary has several to choose from. But there’s just something special about the iconic trio of Maxi, Kaya, and Taffy.

These ladies burst onto the sanctuary scene together in 2019 and quickly ushered in a new era for Hamlet’s social group, the largest and arguably rowdiest group at Chimp Haven.

“All three of these ladies are large and tough,” shares Positive Reinforcement Training Technician Sarah Modlin. “They’re always in the center of the drama because they are the drama.”

If this was Mean Girls and Chimp Haven was a high school, these ladies would be the Plastics.

Kaya, Maxi, and Taffy, the “it” girls of Hamlet’s group

Here’s a quick primer on the crew:

• They’re all incredibly smart and impressively strong.
• They’re fiercely loyal and will go after any boy who starts trouble with a member of their clique.
• They LOVE food. If they see a caregiver approaching with food or enrichment, they’re not above badgering to get an extra snack.

Although the girls do love their share of drama, they’re also very playful with both their chimp groupmates and human caregivers. Smarty-pants Maxi is a whiz at positive reinforcement training, and she likes to find things in her living space that she can “trade” with her caregivers for a treat. Taffy is the brawn of the group and loves throwing her weight around and finding anything she can destroy for fun.

There’s no doubt about it, with personalities this strong, they need a big, rowdy group to balance them out, which makes Hamlet’s family perfect for them. Alpha Hugo tends to be a well-balanced leader and the group is full of equally strong personalities that help keep things stable, even with lots of social dynamics at play.

And, sweetly, our girls tend to be gentler with the older members of their family group, like 64-year-old Jacob and 48-year-old Agnes. Sure, Taffy might steal the occasional banana from poor Agnes, but Maxi helps even things out by allowing her to eat in peace.

They might not be inviting other chimps to sit at their lunch table anytime soon, but what would high school be without the popular girls?

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