Imagine seeing the sky for the first time. There are no words that could ever what Vanilla the Chimp must have been feeling when she left her enclosure and gazed up at the bright blue sky for the first time in her entire life. Vanilla is a 28-year-old survivor of New York’s infamous Laboratory for Experimental Medicine and Surgery in Primates (LEMSIP) whose new home is the Save the Chimps sanctuary in Fort Pierce, Florida.
The LEMSIP was a New York University research facility founded in 1965 by Edward Goldsmith and Jan Moor-Jankowski, which was forcibly closed down in 1996, forcing all the chimpanzees and monkeys housed there to be relocated. Vanilla was among those primates who then transferred to a larger enclosure in California – a refuge that went out of business in 2019 and was threatened by wildfires.
Until moving into the Florida sanctuary, Vanilla had never set outside a five-foot-square cage or a garage-sized enclosure. In a heartwarming video — filmed by Save the Chimps’ primatologist Dr. Andrew Halloran — that’s sweeping the internet, Vanilla can be seen emerging from her enclosure into the sunlight, gazing up at Florida’s beautiful sky, visibly in awe. She seemed apprehensive at first, but the alpha male Dwight soon encouraged her to leave the safety of the indoors. After reacquainting herself with her fellow chimps, Vanilla set out to explore her newfound freedom.
“Vanilla is settling in very well,” Halloran told The New York Post, “When she’s not exploring the island with her friends, she can usually be found perched atop a three-story climbing platform surveying her new world.”
Before transferring to the Sunshine State, Vanilla had only ever lived with a handful of chimps inside a chain-link-fence cage, barely seeing sunlight or nature.
The Californian refuge is home to 226 chimpanzees discarded from laboratories, the entertainment industry, the exotic pet trade, and roadside zoos. Many have previously endured solitary confinement, so this would be their first time ever interacting with other chimps. It seems that Vanilla is settling in well, so all we can do from here on out is wish her well.