The North Carolina Zoo, the N.C. Department of Natural and Cultural Resources and the N.C. Department of Transportation dedicated a highway historical marker Tuesday morning honoring Ham, the first chimpanzee and first great ape to travel into space. The black-and-silver marker stands just west of the roundabout where Zoo Connector, N.C. 159, meets Zoo Parkway, outside the zoo’s entrance.
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July 14 was selected for the dedication because it is World Chimpanzee Day. The annual observance marks the date in 1960 when Jane Goodall arrived in what is now Gombe National Park in Tanzania to begin her groundbreaking study of wild chimpanzees
Long time zookeeper Lane Batot ,who cares for the southern white rhinos and antelope species within the zoo’s Watani Grasslands habitat, recalled Goodall’s visits to the zoo to engage with the program studying chimpanzees behavior and his memories of Ham. “He was a big boy! I think he was around 190 pounds”. "He didn't get to do much natural as a chimp, so when he came here, he got to live a more normal life, with grass under his feet... That's what Jane was so happy about."
Curator of Mammals Jennifer Ireland described how the other chimps were younger, “six to eleven years old. He took over the leadership role even though he had never really socialized with other chimpanzees during his life.” And that’s why Ham came to North Carolina. The NC Zoo wasn’t just a retirement home, it was where he was first able to “be a chimpanzee” as Ireland described.
After his spaceflight career ended, Ham was retired by the Air Force and moved to the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., on April 5, 1963. He remained there for 17 years. For much of that time, Ham lived alone on public display. That changed when he was transferred to the North Carolina Zoo on Sept. 25, 1980.
The move to Asheboro allowed Ham to be reintroduced to other chimpanzees and become part of a social group. At the zoo, he lived in more natural surroundings and developed relationships with other members of the troop. Especially Maggie, one of the original chimpanzees in the habitat, who instantly became Ham’s favorite companion.
Ham lived at the North Carolina Zoo until his death in January 1983. His skeleton was retained for medical study, while his other remains were buried at the International Space Hall of Fame in Alamogordo, New Mexico.
Ham’s path to North Carolina began thousands of miles away.
He was born in what was then French Cameroon in West Africa in 1957. He along with 39 other chimpanzees were brought to Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico in 1959. The practice of capturing wild chimps ended in 1975 with the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).
Chimpanzees were selected because of their intelligence, their physical similarities to humans and their ability to learn and perform tasks. NASA needed to know whether a living creature could not only survive spaceflight but continue to think and respond during the acceleration, weightlessness and stress of spaceflight.
During training, the chimpanzees learned to pull levers in response to lights and sounds. A correct response earned a banana-flavored food pellet. A missed or delayed response brought a mild electrical shock to the soles of their feet. They were also exposed to simulated acceleration and other conditions they would experience during a launch.
The six finalists were taken to Cape Canaveral in January 1961. After physical examinations and additional testing, the chimpanzee known as Number 65 was chosen for the flight. He became publicly known as Ham, an acronym for Holloman Aerospace Medical Center, the laboratory responsible for preparing him for the mission.
When you visit the zoo, look out for the most recent addition to the Chimpanzee group, Bintu, picture below with her mother Genie. Bintu just celebrated her 3rd birthday. Ham was only a few month sold that than that when he was strapped into a pressurized capsule aboard Mercury-Redstone 2 on Jan. 31, 1961. The flight lasted about 16½ minutes, reached an altitude of 157 miles and carried him at more than 5,800 mph while.
The mission did not go entirely as planned. Ham experienced greater forces and traveled higher and farther than expected, exceeding 17 times the force of gravity.
As Ham endured partially lost cabin pressure and water entering the capsule after splashdown, he continued performing the tasks he had learned on the ground. His reaction times were only slightly slower in space, giving NASA confidence that an astronaut could operate controls during a flight.
Four months later, Alan Shepard became the first American in space, experiencing a slightly gentler 11.6 G’s. For comparison the Artemis II crew experienced less than 4 G’s.
Ham retired to the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., on April 5, 1963. He remained there for 17 year where he interacted with guests and keepers, but never other chimpanzees as Ireland described during her remarks at the marker dedication. That changed when he was transferred to the North Carolina Zoo on Sept. 25, 1980.
The move to Asheboro allowed Ham to be reintroduced to other chimpanzees and become part of a social group. At the zoo, he lived in larger, more natural surroundings and developed relationships with other members of the troop. Keepers describe Maggie, one of the original chimpanzees in the habitat, as Ham’s favorite companion.
Ham lived at the North Carolina Zoo until his death in January 1983. His skeleton was retained for medical study at the the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Silver Spring, Maryland and his other remains were buried at a memorial site in front of the New Mexico Museum of Space History in Alamogordo, New Mexico.
“While I never had the honor to know Ham, I had the privilege to work for many years with the zoo’s original six chimpanzees… and like Ham my favorite chimpanzee was Maggie” explained Ireland. Maggie was the last of the group to pass away, in 2019.
Today the zoo is home to 13 chimpanzees including a group of five led by 17 year old Kendall and a group of 8 led by nearly 20 year old Jonathan.