Niete

Pronounced nee-eh-TAY
Pan troglodytes troglodytes
Estimated Birth – February 2001

Niete has lived at Sanaga-Yong since April 2002, when sanctuary staff assisted authorities in her confiscation from behind a restaurant in the Cameroon city of Douala. After her three-month medical quarantine at the sanctuary with baby Emma, who arrived a month earlier, the two joined a growing group of babies in the nursery. The group, in which Simon was the only boy, spent the next two years exploring and learning about the forest under the supervision of loving caregivers. They joined Jacky’s group of adults and older juveniles in 2004, and Niete thrived in the larger group. As an adult, she is strong, kind and self-confident. She vocalizes a lot and is fairly high ranking, though probably not as high as Leilah, Mado and Hope. She has very close female friends of both high and low rank, and they all stick together to be powerful peacekeepers in their group of 19. When Simon attacked Bouboule near their satellite cage early one evening in 2019, Niete and Leilah led the charge as four females instantaneously joined forces to jump on Simon and send him to the forest crying. Niete is often joyful and exuberant in her expressions of excitement over life’s many small pleasures. She can jump for joy over a favorite food delivered by her caregivers. She enjoys grooming the humans she likes, but in her enthusiasm, she can sometimes groom too hard for tender human skin. When the subject of her affection lets her know it hurts, she always seems surprised but immediately adopts a more gentle technique.