A chimpanzee sanctuary in the USA has published video showing the moment a 29-year-old chimp saw the sky for the first time.

The footage shows Vanilla step out into the open and gaze at the sky with delight and awe. It was the first time the chimp was out in open, having spent her entire life inside a caged enclosure.

Vanilla lived with a few other chimps in a five-square-foot cage hanging from the ceiling at a now-shuttered medical research facility in New York for the first two years of her life.

The notorious Laboratory for Experimental Medicine and Surgery in Primates (LEMSIP) housed roughly 300 monkeys and chimpanzees and subjected them to experiments concerning reproduction, blood transfusions, HIV and other diseases. It was shut down in 1997 after US authorities filed criminal charges against the lab for animal mistreatment.

Vanilla was then moved to an animal refuge in California. Conditions at that refuge were significantly better than at the research lab, but Vanilla and other chimps were constrained to caged enclosures and had no ability to roam or see the sky.

The refuge shut down in 2019 and Vanilla again found herself without a home.

That search has now come to an end, with the chimpanzee rehomed at the Save the Chimps sanctuary in Fort Pierce, Florida.

Vanilla is one of 225 primates who live on the 150-acre sanctuary, which is made up of 12 separate islands.

In the video, Vanilla can be seen being guided into the open air by an alpha male, Dwight, before staring at the sky in joy. She appears overjoyed as she looks up in disbelief.

“Vanilla is settling in very well,” primatologist Andrew Halloran said. “When she’s not exploring the island with her friends, she can usually be found perched atop a three-story climbing platform surveying her new world.”

“She gets along with all of the other 18 chimps on her island and has a particularly playful relationship with the alpha male Dwight — from whom she steals food.”