This is Johnny, one of the residents of the Great Apes Sanctuary in Sorocaba, São Paulo, Brazil. He was transferred to the Sanctuary in 2005 and little is known about his origin and past – when he arrived, for example, he didn’t have two fingers on his right hand, and there is no record of an incident that led to this.

It is estimated that he was born at the end of the 1980s. Before arriving at the Sanctuary, he lived for ten years at the zoo in Curitiba, Paraná, south of Brazil.  Before that, he was raised as a pet by a family in São Paulo, living in a 25m² cage.

Fortunately, Johnny had the opportunity to go to the Sanctuary, where he has adapted and lives very well – despite not sharing his enclosure with another chimpanzee. He is cheerful, affectionate, clever, loves to drink water straight from the hose and is very fond of hanging out on the walkway, where he makes nests to sleep in with various blankets.