After nearly three decades cooped up inside a New York laboratory, a heartwarming video posted on social media showed the moment a chimpanzee was stunned when she gazed for the first time at the open sky.
The video posted by Florida chimpanzee sanctuary Save the Chimps, shows a 28-year-old chimpanzee named “Vanilla" leaving her new enclosure only to look at the blue skies for the first time in her life.
As she looked up at the skies in amazement, Vanilla was then greeted with a hug and encouragement by Dwight, another rescued chimpanzee.
According to the organization, Vanilla spent much of her life in a small cage in a now-closed research lab in New York. In 1997, she was rescued and transferred to a California sanctuary where she was kept inside a chain-link fence cage with no grass or enriching environment.
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“She had never been outside of a lab cage or the garage-sized enclosure she was transferred to in California,” a Save the Chimps spokesperson told WFLA.
The sanctuary added Vanilla now gets along with all the other 18 rescued chimps on the sanctuary island and has since developed a playful friendship with Dwight, the alpha male that first welcomed her outside to see the sky.
Save the Chimps is a privately funded sanctuary in Fort Pierce, Florida, that currently holds over 220 rescued animals.
