Retired Nasa chimps enjoy the wild life

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Philip Sherwell in Shreveport, Louisiana
(Filed: 06/11/2005)

As the first rays of sunlight filtered through the trees, chimpanzees emerged for their dawn patrol around the edge of a pond and began scavenging for fruit. Clutching their breakfast, some drifted into the woods; others sat and watched, warily.

It might have been a scene from the African jungle as man's nearest genetic cousins performed their morning rituals. In fact, this was a remote corner of north-western Louisiana, where the United States's first government-funded retirement home for working chimps has recently opened.

Last week, the Sunday Telegraph was granted rare access to the inhabitants of Chimp Haven as they adjusted to life in the semi-wild, after decades serving man's needs in the space programme and in US medical research centres.

Those animals originally born in the wild in Africa have been quick to begin climbing trees and building nests, even though most were only a few months old when captured and shipped to America during the 1960s. The others, born in captivity, are slowly beginning to copy them.

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