• 6 years ago
A young chimpanzee rescued by Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary in Freetown, Sierra Leone, showed off her range of facial expressions in a June 25 video, as she was given a satisfying facial massage.The video, shared to the Facebook page for Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary, shows Miga screwing her lips in satisfaction as she enjoys the care from the sanctuary’s veterinarian. “Chimps use facial expressions, vocalizations and body language to communicate,” wrote the rescue organisation.Miga is thought to be around five years of age and was rescued by Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary in March 2018 from a home where she had been kept as a pet for several years. The organisation believes her family were killed for the illegal bushmeat trade, and Miga was then illegally sold as a pet. Young chimpanzees normally stay with their mother until around eight years of age. In this video, Miga had just come out of a quarantine period and will soon start the process in which she will be introduced to other chimpanzees her age in the sanctuary.Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary told Storyful, “It is important during the early stages of rehabilitation to slowly reduce the human contact that they are so used to, to minimize stress and anxiety in these infant chimps. Tagugama staff work hard to rehabilitate chimps into social groups so they can once again enjoy a more natural life than when kept as pets. Eventually human contact is removed and the chimps live in semi wild enclosures and express natural foraging and social behavious.” Credit: Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary via Storyful

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