Chimpanzees are our closest living relatives with cognitive abilities, social complexity, and emotional lives that make their welfare in captivity one of the most ethically significant questions in modern zoo management.
Chimpanzee welfare in captivity requires exceptional attention to social complexity, cognitive stimulation, and space. Self-injurious behavior — hair plucking, self-biting, and wound reopening — in a proportion of captive chimpanzees directly reflects inadequate early social experience or ongoing inadequate social and environmental complexity. The trauma of chimpanzees formerly used in entertainment or research, characterized by severe behavioral abnormalities, demonstrates what profound welfare deprivation looks like in a cognitively complex species. Accredited sanctuaries providing large outdoor areas, complex social groups, and cognitive enrichment represent the gold standard for chimpanzee welfare and the direction zoo facilities should aspire toward.