In the wild mother and baby are inseparable for four years and stay together for nine or ten. Young chimps at BPRC are housed in peer groups, in airtight box rooms. They huddle together exhibiting rocking behaviour and seem terrified of human contact. In the wild such behaviour is never seen. Chimpanzees infected experimentally with diseases are kept in isolation, unable to touch another chimp.
Chimpanzee cages are usually too small to allow freedom of movement.
In the wild, chimpanzees live for forty or fifty years in complex and large social groups. They play and groom, hunt and forage, and travel miles and miles a week. Laboratory chimpanzees often become psychotic. They rock, grimace, play with their faeces, masturbate and tend to be aggressive and violent or unnaturally passive and submissive. In the wild, chimps are fun loving sociable animals, with a sense of morality, a hierarchy, intimate personal relationships and a range of emotions, such as jealousy, love, hate, passion, sadness, grief etc.