Great Ape Trust Membership Days tours will include time in the bonobo home. Above, the world-famous Kanzi and researcher Liz Rubert-Pugh at the computer-based lexigrams. Great Ape Trust photo.

Some slots remain open for May 30, the first of four opportunities this year for the public to visit world-class scientific research facility

Des Moines, Iowa – July 24, 2009 – Some 900 guests have visited Great Ape Trust and another 300 are scheduled to tour the southeast Des Moines home of six orangutans and six bonobos before the end of the 2009 public visitation schedule. Parents and children, grandparents and grandchildren, couples and best friends, Great Ape Trust members and their guests hail from 32 states, one territory (Puerto Rico) and six countries (in addition to the United States, Canada, Italy, the Netherlands, Ecuador and Spain). Whether from cities, suburbs, small towns or the rural countryside, they share a passion for great apes and a desire to see them in a setting unlike any other in the world.

“I was truly impressed,” said Martha Tinker of West Des Moines, who attended the July 18 membership tour. “I was totally blown away by your facility and the research being done at Great Ape Trust.”

Visitors will have a chance to watch Azy and other orangutans traveling through their 3-acre forest yard. Great Ape Trust photo.

Tinker, who said she comes from a “science-oriented” family, knew little about Great Ape Trust before her visit, but left solidly impressed with the scientific expertise The Trust has brought to Des Moines.

“What impressed me more than anything was that such a facility, with absolutely top-notch researchers, exists in Des Moines, Iowa,” she said. “No one thinks of Des Moines as a ‘science center,’ much less aspiring to be the home of the largest great ape facility in North America.”

Great Ape Trust’s 2009 Membership Days sold out quickly. Operations Director Jim Aipperspach said Tinker’s comments are typical and a reflection of the high-quality experience visitors have received under a program restructured to allow more time with apes and scientists.

“Because of significant flooding on our campus in the summer of 2008, our visitation program was necessarily discontinued,” Aipperspach said. “We responded by establishing an even more meaningful, engaging visitors’ experience. To be sure, the apes and professional staff, as well as visitors, are thoroughly enjoying the insightful educational experience at Great Ape Trust.”

Bonobos may choose to spend time in their outdoor play yard. Visitors are encouraged to bring binoculars to get a better view. Great Ape Trust photo.

Great Ape Trust Director of Conservation Dr. Benjamin Beck said the opportunity to visit with world-class scientists and see primates in cognitive research settings can make the difference between a one-time visit and a lifelong fascination with the species. Before coming to The Trust in 2003, Beck served a 12-year stint as research curator and curator of primates at the Brookfield Zoo near Chicago and was general curator and associate director of the Smithsonian National Zoological Park in Washington, D.C. for another 20 years.

He said enthusiasm among Great Ape Trust visitors rivals that of the guests to innovative exhibits at the National Zoo, including the outdoor golden lion tamarin exhibit mimicking the tamarins’ native Brazilian forest habitat and the Think Tank, a pioneering exhibit on animal thinking that opened in 1995. Beck designed the tamarin exhibit and was project executive for the Think Tank, and elements of those programs have been incorporated at Great Ape Trust.

“They see not just what is present on a given day, but also the back story of programs, activities, staff involvement and commitment that is not evident in a single visit,” Beck said. “Once they get a glimpse of the back story, there is a narrative thread visitors will follow in subsequent visits.”

“The interaction with the scientists was the aspect of the program that was most valuable,” said Tinker, the July 18 visitor. “Without their commentary and explanations, it would have been difficult to understand the research and benefits of the work being done at Great Ape Trust. I found all of them willing to explain their research and to answer questions, and they were willing to spend any amount of time doing this.”

Knobi uses one hand to hold onto a recycled fire hose holding a hammock in place and the other to grab some fresh browse from a tree in the orangutans’ 3-acre forest yard. Great Ape Trust photo.

Discussion with Director of Scientific Research William M. Fields helped Tinker to better understand the significance of the interaction between the bonobo Kanzi, whose spontaneous lexigrams utterances as an infant opened new frontiers in the science of ape language, and Dr. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh.

Savage-Rumbaugh, a Scientist with Special Standing who pioneered the research that forms the foundation of Great Ape Trust’s research trajectory, said she saw reflected in the eyes of visitors “a sense of pure astonishment coupled with an earnest desire to understand more.”

“There is a sense rising to the surface that there is a real truth here, a truth that needs to be grasped and understood,” Savage-Rumbaugh said. “People may not know what it is, but they are realizing that it somehow exists nonetheless. I can see it in their eyes as they lock their gaze into Kanzi’s eyes.”

The visit to the bonobo home, where guests visit in groups of 30 at a time, is the most structured part of the membership program. Venues also include views of the bonobos’ outdoor play yards; the orangutans’ forest yard, at nearly 4 acres believed to be the largest for captive apes in North America; campus conservation sites; and the Great Ape Learning Center, where guests visit with scientists about cognitive research and conservation initiatives, watch videotaped research sessions and a live video feed from the bonobo laboratory, and attempt some to the same cognitive and tool tasks completed by the apes in research sessions.

Additional membership days or VIP visits will not be booked this year. The Trust’s visitation program strikes a careful balance between maintaining continuity required by an aggressive ape-language research trajectory and public interest in meeting and learning more about the bonobos and orangutans living on the 230-acre campus in southeast Des Moines.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

Great Ape Trust of Iowa is a scientific research facility in southeast Des Moines dedicated to understanding the origins and future of culture, language, tools and intelligence.  When completed, Great Ape Trust will be the largest great ape facility in North America and one of the first worldwide to include all four types of great ape – bonobos, chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans – for noninvasive interdisciplinary studies of their cognitive and communicative capabilities.

Great Ape Trust is dedicated to providing sanctuary and an honorable life for great apes, studying the intelligence of great apes, advancing conservation of great apes and providing unique educational experiences about great apes.  Great Ape Trust of Iowa is a 501(c) 3 not-for-profit organization and is certified by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA).