Animal Planet’s hit series Escape to Chimp Eden, which focuses on the plight of the African chimps and Eugene Cousin’s quest to rescue them is now over. Over the course of the season, many of you had questions about how to help Eugene or how the chimps came to be in the situations that they were in.

Eugene has taken the time to answer some of these pressing questions. I thought I’d post some videos regarding some of the questions that you all have been asking. The fourth question that we’ll tackle from this season is “What were some of the individual chimp stories?” In this video clip Eugene speaks about his relationship with chimps Jao and Cozy. He speaks about how close he came with Jao as well as the struggles that Cozi faced due to his age.

Watch the video clip below to receive your answers. Keep pulling for the chimps by watching the show when it re-airs next season.

Animal Planet’s hit series Escape to Chimp Eden, which focuses on the plight of the African chimps and Eugene Cousin’s quest to rescue them is now over. Over the course of the season, many of you had questions about how to help Eugene or how the chimps came to be in the situations that they were in.

Eugene has taken the time to answer some of these pressing questions. I thought I’d post some videos regarding some of the questions that you all have been asking. The third question that we’ll tackle from this season is “What were some of the risks faced with making Chimp Eden possible?”

Watch the video clip below to receive your answers. Keep pulling for the chimps by watching the show when it re-airs next season.

Animal Planet’s hit series Escape to Chimp Eden, which focuses on the plight of the African chimps and Eugene Cousin’s quest to rescue them is now over. Over the course of the season, many of you had questions about how to help Eugene or how the chimps came to be in the situations that they were in.

Eugene has taken the time to answer some of these pressing questions. I thought I’d post some videos regarding some of the questions that you all have been asking. The second question that we’ll tackle from this season is “What does it take to start Chimp Eden?”

Watch the video clip below to receive your answers. Keep pulling for the chimps by watching the show when it re-airs next season.

Animal Planet’s hit series Escape to Chimp Eden, which focuses on the plight of the African chimps and Eugene Cousin’s quest to request them is now over. Over the course of the season, many of you had questions about how to help Eugene or how the chimps came to be in the situations that they were in.

Eugene has taken the time to answer some of these pressing questions. I thought I’d post some videos regarding some of the questions that you all have been asking. The first question that Eugene will answer is “What is the Bushmeat Trade?”

Watch the video clip below to receive your answers. Keep pulling for the chimps by watching the show when it re-airs next season.

Alot of chimps that are at chimp Eden arrived due to the bushman trade. In this episode of Escape to Chimp Eden, Eugene is going to the Sudan to rescue five baby chimps. The twist of this episode is that he needs to make it back to his wife in time as she is 7 months pregnant and expected to give birth at anytime. This episode of Escape to Chimp Eden originally aired on April 11th at 9PM ET/PT.

It takes Eugene about 10 hours to fly to the Sudan. His wife is very scared because there are so many political issues going on in Sudan at the time of Eugene’s visit. When Eugene arrives in Sudan he is faced with alot of rain and flooding even though it is just the beginning of the rainy season.

When Eugene arrives at the local he now realizes that there are 7 chimps as opposed to the 5 chimp permits that he’d applied for. Eugene has to make the sad decision of selecting which 5 chimps he can take back with him to Chimp Eden. Eugene needs to get the chimps out as quickly as possible. The locals are very insecure and consider them to be a threat and addition thee of the chimps are babies.

Watch an itunes clip below as Eugene brings the baby chimps home.

Image Source: Brent Stirton / Getty Images (Eugene with rescued chimp Sally)

In episode 5 of Escape to Chimp Eden we were introduced to the Angolan Girls and the struggles that they went through prior to him rescuing them from Angola.

Eugene was worried about introducing the three new girls to the male chimps in the adult compound and wasn’t sure what to do because these male chimps were known to be violent and aggressive. The Angolan Girlshad been in quarantine for a period of three months and are now ready to be released.

When the male chimps saw the female chimps they literally went crazy through the bars, and the females hadn’t even entered the same compound area as the males yet. Mimi is the first female chimp to join in with the males. They just chased her around but didn’t get too aggressive. She just acted like she was happy to be free. She had been caged up for so many years when in Angola and hadn’t even touched grass with her feet before.

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In this episode of Escape to Chimp Eden, Eugene and the team are working to release three females into the outdoor enclosure.

This is the first time that these chimps will have been able to feel grass under their feet or even able to climb trees since they’d been at the Eden.
Essentially, to give you a background on how things are set-up at Chimp Eden is that they have 2 enclosures, one of the adult males and one for the adult females. The males in the male sanctuary are very aggressive and none of the keepers really go in because of their aggressive behaviors to humans.

Now to the average person, this may not sound like a big deal, but it really is because these female chimps will now be living with three other male chimps and this could pose to be a challenge. These male chimps are big and strong and could literally tear the females apart. The staff at Chimp Eden’s goals are to get the males to accept the females into their sanctuary.

The 3 females are Gita, Mimi and Mika and they were rescued from Angola after Eugene tried for years to get them out of Angola due to the bureaucratic red tape. The lives that these chimps lived were absolutely ridiculous. Gita was chained to the outside of a nightclub for 6 1/2 years before she was finally rescued. Mimi lived in a cave for over 12 years and was never let out.

Its a no brainer that the lives they will be living at the sanctuary is so much better than anything they could possibly be offered right now.

Image: Brent Stirton/Getty Images

This Escape to Chimp Eden episode was about chimp Xena. Xena is a 3 year old infant female chimp that had been badly abused. Xena is going to be introduced to the female adult enclosure. A few weeks prior three of the females had been introduced to three of the males. This can be quite a process because of all the abuse that the chimps had gone through as well as the unpredictable behavior of the male chimps.

As Xena entered the enclosure with the female chimps she met Mimi, which kind of gave her the cold shoulder, but she didn’t really pay attention to it. Xena is a very strong and dominant chimp, so the humans at Chimp Eden are very scared as to how they will react to her. They decide to mix it up and have all the chimps get together in the internal quarters. They are prepared for everything just in case a fight breaks out between the males and Xena.

Nikki is the first chimp to enter and all HELL breaks loose. Its crazy to see the behavior that is exhibited towards her. Is that what we’ve done to our animals where they don’t want to interact with each other. Its all good though. After a while, Nikki does warm up to her, so it seems, but then he gets wild again and has to leave the enclosure. Xena gets so riled up in this episode that she starts to escape from the Eden. It’s looking like a scary situation.

Xena does escape briefly but Eugene does work his magic to get Xena to come back inside.

Getty Images: Brent Stirton

In this episode of Chimp Eden, Eugene has to enter one of the encampments but needs to gain permission from Jao.

Jao is 43 years old and is considered the alpha chimp of the encampment. Because of the craziness that these chimps have gone through anything can trigger violent behavior from one of them at anytime. According to Eugene, the chimps have a mental capacity of a 5 year old but the strength of 7 times that of a human being.

It seemed like everything is working out fine with Eugene and he is gaining the trust and respects of the chimps. however the workers along with Eugene has the chimps start a tree climbing exercise and everything just goes down hill from there. Jao starts to get really angry and upset and eventually attacks Eugene. Because Jao is really strong and has alot of rage and anger Eugene is basically no match for him and they have to resort to extreme measures to get him under control.

Its just a really sad situation to see what these chimps have had to go through. Keep posted for more updates on this wonderful show and the work that Eugene is doing.

Cozi is an 11 year old chimp that was born in America and sold to a photographer in Italy to be used as a prop. Cozi had been with the photographer for a while, traveling with him to shoots and jobs. The photographer later dies while

Cozi is still a baby and gets left to be taken care of by the photographers girlfriend, who is later found out to be afraid of Cozi. As a result of this she locks Cozi up in a cage in a trailer home, locks the doors and the curtains and never lets him out again!

NINE YEARS LATER, JGI Italy receives information about this chimp that has been locked up in an trailer with no food, a darkened room and space barely enough to stand upright. As a result of this Cozi’s bone and muscle development has been severely stunted. Image if you’d been locked in a cage since the age of 2. How sad!

Since arriving at Chimp Eden, Cozi has made great progress and has developed alot of confidence. Meet Cozi!