Get up close and personal with the chimps while enjoying their daily activities.

Share brunch with the simians at Chimp Haven.

There’s eating brunch with friends, and there’s eating brunch with chimpanzees.

It’s easy to do the former, but you can only do it twice a year. Your next opportunity is Nov. 17, when Chimp Haven hosts Brunch in the Wild. The event, which costs $300 per person, will let you get as close and personal as possible with chimps who are retired from biomedical research and now live on 200 acres in Keithville. The event is limited to 25 people. Children must be at least 7 years old.

“You will get to eat a homemade brunch from the Shreveport Biscuit Company,” said Morgahn Bruns, Chimp Haven’s communications and development specialist. “You will get a behind-the-scenes tour on a hayride; you get to eat down at our Annenberg Pavilion, where the chimps can actually come up to the glass and interact with you. They will also get their breakfast after we are done eating ours.”

But that’s not all. “You will get to watch a positive reinforcement training session with our chimps,” Bruns said. “We use this to advance their medical behavior and to keep their brains active during the day. Then, we do a chimp painting session that everyone gets to watch.”

No, you won’t paint a picture of a chimp. The chimp will do the painting!

Brunch in the Wild is limited to 25 people per event.

“The chimps do know how to paint,” Bruns said. “They will make paintings on a canvas. They think it’s quite fun to paint. Not all of them like to paint, but some of them do. You will get to watch a chimp painting, and you will get to take (a painting) home.”

And about that positive reinforcement training …

“We do positive reinforcement training to advance the chimps’ medical behavior,” Bruns said. “We will ask them for things like their hands, feet and basic body presentations. They will get a reward — a squirt of juice, a peanut or something like that. We use the clicker system, the same thing you would use to train your dog. Through that, we can advance their medical needs. By asking them for their arm, we can desensitize them to a needle, and we can injectiontrain them. We can also take their temperature.

We are a no-touch facility, so we don’t touch the chimps at all. This is a great way to get readings from outside their enclosure.”

2025 will mark Chimp Haven’s 30th year.

The facility was founded in 1995, but because all the habitats had to be built, the first chimp didn’t arrive until 2005.

“Chimps were once used in biomedical research, and then they were deemed not usable in research anymore,” Bruns said. “They were all retired to our facility. They now live with us, and we do everything we possibly can to take care of them and give them the best life possible. We put them in large social groups where they can interact with other chimps — males, females — and create bonds with them.”

While Bruns referred to Chimp Haven as a “retirement center,” the chimps do more than sit around and relax.

“We do enrichment for them every single day, so we are providing them things to keep their brain stimulated and keep them active during the day by running around with them.”

The chimps are also well fed.

“We give them lots of healthy, amazing diets every day that they go crazy for, especially things like apples, bananas, and, of course, they absolutely love fruit,” Bruns explained.

And should a chimp get sick, there is a doctor close by.

“We have a full veterinary staff on site that takes care of them every day and gives them all of their medicine and makes sure they are healthy,” Bruns said.

To buy Brunch in the Wild tickets, visit chimphaven.org, click the “Plan Your Events” tab, and then click “Events.”