A 28-year-old laboratory chimpanzee’s reaction to seeing the sun for the first time in her life has gone viral on the internet.
The monkey, named Vanilla, remained in a cage for nearly three decades, first in New York and then in California, until she was rescued by Florida’s chimpanzee sanctuary, Save the Chimps.
The moving moment in which he goes out into the open and sees the sky for the first time was captured in a video posted on social networks. The animal’s gesture of astonishment upon seeing sunlight has moved thousands of Internet users.
The recording shows how after going outside, she is received by another rescued specimen named Dwight, who hugs her.
According to the organization, Vanilla spent her early years in a small cage in a now-shuttered New York research lab. In 1997 she was moved to a California sanctuary, but there she was put in another cage with a chain-link fence with no grass or nurturing environment.
“She had never been out of a lab cage or garage-sized enclosure that she was transferred to in California,” he told WFLA a spokesperson for Save the Chimps.
The group specified that Vanilla shares her new life with 18 other rescued chimpanzees, with whom she gets along very well. She in particular has become very friendly with Dwight, the alpha male who greeted her upon breaking out of her confinement for the first time.
Save the Chimps is a privately funded sanctuary based in Fort Pierce, currently home to more than 220 rescued animals.
The organization has asked those interested to collaborate with the adaptation of Vanilla to its new habitat with a donation or a symbolic adoption.
