Nick Pyenson

People often ask me, oh, would they recognize you?

Of course they recognize me.

I was their mother for 24 years.

It has been a number of years now since I've been there.

It got to the point where it was just so difficult to leave that I just couldn't put myself through that anymore.

And I think it was hard on the chimps, too.

I genuinely loved her and continue to love her as an individual and all the chimps, but Sheba especially, just because we had a very special relationship.

And I swore I wasn't going to cry, but that one made me cry.

There's no question in my mind that we've lost out on a huge amount of important information about ourselves and about the species that's closest to us, the common chimpanzee, by not having this work continuing.

Mostly what it does is makes me realize that 50 years, I'm almost tearing up talking about this, but the 50 years that I spent advocating for them seems now to be paying off.

Nim's daughter right in front of me and her group, you know, I mean, it could have been a lot worse.

And it's a testament to all the people that stood up and said, no, we can do better.

So for 30 years, I am a scientist.

I'm embedded in the system.

And my job is to basically help the system make a better monkey model.

And I was good at it.

You know, I had a large team out in Southeast Asia.

because that really made the troop mad.

I mean, we literally had to have people with sticks standing around us to try to drive the monkeys back, because that's how intent these animals were to get their friends back.

Everyone's screaming, they're pooping, they're peeing, they're shrieking.