Chimpanzees are our closest living relatives with extraordinary cognitive and social complexity. Providing for their welfare in captivity demands exceptional resources and expertise.
Chimpanzee welfare represents perhaps the most demanding challenge in captive animal care. As our closest relatives, with demonstrated capacity for suffering, emotional complexity, cultural learning, and social intelligence comparable in many ways to young humans, their welfare needs are extraordinary. The closure of US biomedical research to chimpanzee testing has created both a welfare opportunity and a challenge: hundreds of former research chimpanzees need lifetime care in sanctuaries that meet their complex social and environmental needs. The best chimpanzee facilities provide large social groups with shifting composition, complex three-dimensional environments, extensive cognitive enrichment, positive-reinforcement-based veterinary management, and the resources for decades of care. The welfare and cognitive sophistication of chimpanzees makes their presence in inadequate facilities a serious ethical concern.