- New footage shows a chimpanzee who spent her entire life without ever setting eyes on the open sky.
- Vanilla was hesitant at first but is now "fully integrated" with other chimp friends at the sanctuary.
A chimpanzee kept in captivity for about 28 years appears awestruck after seeing the open sky for the first time.
The touching footage, posted by the sanctuary Save the Chimps, shows the animal named Vanilla "in awe, gazing up at the open and vast sky above her for the first time in her life," the group said.
The video shows the animal hesitantly looking out a doorway at the Florida outdoor sanctuary but is greeted with a hug from an alpha male chimpanzee called Dwight. She stares up at the sky in amazement and then starts exploring the new three-acre island home.
"She is clearly elated to have suddenly found freedom," Dan Mathews, the sanctuary's director of events and special projects, told The New York Post.
"Florida's wildest retirement community"
Vanilla spent the first years of her life locked in a tiny cage in New York's infamous Laboratory for Experimental Medicine and Surgery in Primates (LEMSIP), "suspended from the ground like bird cages," said Save the Chimps.
She was rescued in 1995 and sent to the Wildlife Waystation in California, but all her homes had a cage roof, where she was still kept in an enclosed space — until the organization was recently closed.
"Vanilla was with five other chimps in an outdoor enclosure that was about the size of a garage," he said. "It was made from chain-link fencing on all sides and up top, with a dirt and concrete floor," said Dan Mathews, director of events and special projects at the Save the Chimps sanctuary in Fort Pierce, per the Daily Mail.
After a quarantine process, Vanilla and other chimps from Wildlife Waystation were introduced to the larger community at the Florida sanctuary and are now "fully integrated," the group said.
When Vanilla is "not exploring the island with her friends, she can usually be found perched atop a three-story climbing platform surveying her new world," Halloran said.
The sanctuary - dubbed "Florida's wildest retirement community" – offers "life-long care" for more than 220 chimps rescued from research laboratories, the pet trade, and the entertainment industry.
The Save the Chimp sanctuary is situated on 150 acres in Fort Pierce, Florida, and includes a three-acre island home, complete with hills, shelter, and climbing structures.
This island home enables the chimps to roam freely and make basic choices formerly denied, living out their days in peace, safety, and happiness.