Watch: 28-year-old former lab chimpanzee sees sky for first time

Moving footage shows the moment a chimpanzee who was used for laboratory research sees the sky for the first time.

Vanilla, a 28-year-old chimpanzee, spent many years in a biomedical research facility in New York where animals were housed in cages suspended from the ground.

She was rescued by a wildlife sanctuary in 1995 and had to be re-homed when it closed in 2019.

Vanilla has finally been moved to an open sanctuary in Florida with a three-acre island to explore.

Footage shows the hesitant chimpanzee in awe of seeing the vast open sky for the first time.