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.
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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.
