![]() 7 of a second, compared with man’s average. Its average response time to a given physical stimulus is. Intelligent and normally docile, the chimpanzee is a primate of sufficient size and sapience to provide a reasonable facsimile of human behavior. You really got the sense that these were incredibly smart ‘people’ just working their tails off to do something that had never been done before.” “Those were great assignments, shooting the early years with NASA. (At the age of two, most chimpanzees would still be a nursing infant dependent on their mothers, so it’s important to keep in mind how young Ham was during this intense training.) “Ham, especially, was a very friendly fellow,” recounted one photographer for Life magazine. Over time, chimpanzees were weeded out of the program (down to 18 and then to 6) as physically or mentally unfit, but two-year-old Ham’s extreme intelligence and calm demeanor helped him complete the sixteen-month training and pass all (frequent) medical evaluations. The chimps, like humans, were also exposed to g-forces and microgravity to simulate space flight. The same tasks were to be performed during the actual flight to make sure humans could perform such tasks while under the stress of orbit. The entire training duration was spent strapped in a special contoured chair (or “couch”) while wearing a nylon suit and diaper. The correct response earned them a treat of banana pellets. If the correct lever was not pulled after five seconds, the chimps were subjected to a light shock on bottom of their feet. The training, under the direction of a neuroscientist, involved pulling levers in a specific sequence after receiving colored light cues. Photo: NASAĭuring their training at Holloman, the basic job of the chimpanzees was to make sure humans could survive the rigors of space flight. The same year that Ham arrived at Holloman AFB (1959), a rhesus macaque named Sam completed a successful 53-mile flight in the Little Joe 2 rocket as part of Project Mercury, the same program for which Ham trained. I particularly highlight this pair because Patricia and Mike “retired” to the National Zoo in 1954 Patricia died two years later, and Mike died in 1967-both of natural causes. In May 1952, two Philippine macaques named Patricia and Mike survived a flight of 36 miles above earth, which was too short to be considered a space flight, but it was a successful mission. In September 1951, Yorick became the first monkey to survive a space flight (but succumbed a few hours after the event at Holloman AFB). In June 1948, a rhesus macaque named Albert I was launched into space in a V-2 rocket over White Sands, NM, but died during flight. Many of these trial runs led to injury or death. (The chimps were not given names so that humans did not become as attached to them in case of a tragedy during testing.)Īnimals-mostly dogs, monkeys, and chimpanzees- had been used by Americans and Russians to test the effects of prolonged weightlessness for more than a decade before Ham arrived at Holloman. As yet unnamed, the chimp was referred to as #65 during his training. Ham joined about 40 other chimpanzees who were already part of the program. ![]() Air Force and transferred to Holloman Air Force Base in Alamogordo, New Mexico, to become a participant in space flight research. Born in 1957, Ham was captured by trappers in present-day Cameroon, West Africa, and brought to the (now-defunct) Rare Bird Farm in Miami, Florida. ![]() When Ham arrived at the National Zoo, he was a retiree at only six years old, but those first six years of his life were quite an adventure. I have already introduced you to Smokey Bear, but while Smokey called the zoo home, another celebrity, also with a New Mexico connection, became his neighbor on Connecticut Avenue in 1963-Ham, the first chimpanzee in space. While researching the history of the Smithsonian’s National Zoo, I have discovered that it had a few celebrity residents that were not giant pandas.
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