Vanilla the chimp quickly making friends at Fla sanctuary

Vanilla’s social life is finally sweet!

The long-isolated chimpanzee — seen in a touching video viewing the sky for the first time — has fit seamlessly into a group of chimps at the Florida sanctuary which rescued her, workers said.

The 29-year-old chimp, who was confined to a small enclosure for decades, has been playfully wrestling and snatching food from pals on her new island colony at Save the Chimps in Fort Pierce, according to staffers.

“Vanilla, in particular, is super friendly with everybody and has been seen rough-housing with them — as if [she’s] been there forever,” said Ashley Cooley, a curator at the refuge center.

“For as small and tiny of a chimp as she is, she has a big personality. She doesn’t think twice about stealing food from the bigger boys,” she said.

Chimps in Vanilla’s new clique accepted her onto their 4-acre island home after she got the seal of approval from an alpha male named Dwight, Cooley said.

“She formed really close bonds with Dwight…which paved the way for her to get ‘in’,”Cooley said.

Vanilla’s sister, Shake, is also living with the group but is “a bit more reserved,” she said.

Vanilla — who once lived in a 5-by-5 foot cage at New York’s notorious Laboratory for Experimental Medicine and Surgery in Primates (LEMSIP) — now spends her days munching fruit and peanuts and lounging with friends on a sprawling outdoor structure.

She was also seen grooming her sister, Shake, high up on the structure.

The sweet-faced chimp captured the world’s heart last week when a video showed her awe-struck as she gazed up at the open sky for the first time in her life.

Workers at Save the Chimps spent months helping Vanilla learn to socialize before releasing her outside and testing out whether the primate group would welcome her.

“The biggest gift we give any chimpanzee here is the opportunity to learn how to be chimps….how to survive within a large social group, which Vanilla is a member of now,” said Save the Chimps CEO Molly Polidoroff.

Vanilla was born into captivity in 1995 and lived in a cramped cage at the LEMSIP — which primate expert Jane Goodall reportedly described as a hellhole —  until she was 2 years old.

Chimps at the virus-testing laboratory in Tuxedo, NY were jabbed with needles and spent their days watching TV alone with no access to the outdoors or a social circle.

Vanilla was then moved from the now-shuttered lab to a refuge center in California, where she was confined to a garage-sized enclosure for years.

In July 2022, she was relocated to the Save the Chimps sanctuary, a 150-acre former orange grove.

She was quarantined then allowed to go outside, where she was greeted with a hug by Dwight, in May.

The sanctuary has several 3-to-5 acre islands of chimps groups, many of whom were subjected to medical testing, the exotic pet trade or the entertainment industry.

“We try to give them as close to a life as they would have had in the wild,” Polidoroff said.

Chimpanzees share more than 98 percent of their DNA with humans, making them valuable medical research subjects —  but also highly sensitive to inhumane captivity and isolation.

The sanctuary, now home to 226 chimpanzees, aims to give traumatized chimps  “a safe and protected retirement,” Polidoroff said.