A heartwarming video of chimpanzees — used for decades by labs across the United States for research — being set free at a sanctuary in northern Georgia has taken the internet by storm.

The chimps are the latest group to arrive at Project Chimps from the University of Louisiana’s New Iberia Research Center (NIRC), which housed the largest population of privately-owned chimpanzees in the United States. Project Chimps has some big-name backers, with Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong on its board and is supported by Rachael Ray, Judy Greer and Kat Von D.

“Twenty former research chimpanzees just arrived from the lab (NIRC) in November,” Ali Crumpacker, executive director, Project Chimps, said. The chimps were kept under surveillance for a month before being released into their new habitat in December.

Upon going outside for the first time, the chimps looked around in awe — before setting off to climb on posts and explore the outside for the first time in their lives. Some were so scared they went back inside while the braver ones ventures ahead. Some even waved to the keepers through glass windows.

In 2015, all chimps, both wild and captive, were listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), and in November of that year, the National Institute of Health announced an end to funding invasive chimpanzee research and would retire all government-owned chimpanzees.

Project Chimps, located on 236 acres of forest in the Blue Ridge Mountains in Georgia, was created to help house some of these primates.

“When the federal government ended the use of chimpanzees in invasive medical research, nearly 700 chimps around the US needed a forever home,” Crumpacker said. “Those in government-funded studies could go to Chimp Haven, a sanctuary designated for government research chimps. Hundreds had no place to go, so our founders negotiated an agreement with the lab that had the largest population of research chimps in one place: the New Iberia Research Center. We bought the former gorilla sanctuary in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Georgia in 2015, in anticipation of the federal government’s decision to end testing on chimps, and welcomed our first residents — nine females — in September 2016.”

“We now have 79 chimpanzees in residence and our first phase — a refurbished former gorilla sanctuary — will be able to hold up to 100,” Crumpacker added. However, “nearly 130 (more chimpanzees) are waiting in the lab. We hope to bring 10-20 more in 2020. To bring the remaining chimps, we need to build the second phase of our sanctuary, with new chimp houses and companion outdoor habitats.”

The group seen on the video includes a chimpanzee named Kirk who joined Hercules and Leo, two chimps that were the subject of a lawsuit filed and lost by the Nonhuman Rights Project that attempted to gain them legal personhood.

While not much is known about Kirk’s story, due to confidentiality agreements, Hercules and Leo spent at least five years in a basement lab at Stony Brook University and forced to walk upright (bipedal) with electrodes in their muscles.

All of the chimps at the facility were born into captivity.

“In the 1960s, chimps were used in the space program,” Crumpacker said. “In the 1980s there was a tremendous increase in the breeding of chimps for use in HIV and AIDS research, which was unsuccessful because very few chimpanzees progressed from HIV to AIDS. Later studies included Hepatitis C research. Some chimps were used for federal research, many were leased to other private labs and universities and some were used primarily for breeding.”

To stop the chimps from breeding at Project Chimp, the primates will be put on birth control.

While chimps are no longer subject to animal research, other primates are. On Friday, PETA released a report that was obtained via the Freedom of Information Act, which showed shocking “reports of animal welfare failures that took place across a 22-month period from January 2018 to October 2019 at the laboratories of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the taxpayer-funded steward of medical and behavioral research of the United States.” Abused animals included primates and owl monkeys.

As for the chimps in the sanctuary — “we need to make sure we are funded — chimps can live up to 65 years in captivity and we have to take care of them after we’re gone,” said Leslie Wade, the communications manager for Project Chimps.

Donate to Project Chimps to help build facilities and care for the chimps, which costs $22,000 per year per chimp.