Yeah, got busted for smoking cigarettes. What are you in for?
Posted on 04/18/2005 2:26:20 PM PDT by vannrox
Zoo Wants Chimpanzee to Stop Smoking
Fri Apr 15, 8:39 AM ET Oddly Enough - Reuters
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - A South African zoo is trying to persuade its star chimpanzee to kick a bad smoking habit.
Charlie, a grown male chimp and the Bloemfontein Zoo, has been picking up cigarettes thrown to him by visitors and smoking them -- a habit he probably picked up by observing humans, zoo officials told the SAPA news agency on Thursday.
"Baby chimps pick up habits by mimicking adults and we think he started mimicking smokers at his enclosure which probably led to smokers throwing him cigarettes," spokesman Daryl Barnes told SAPA.
Barnes said Charlie was already showing the signs of a true nicotine addict.
"He even acts like a naughty schoolboy by hiding the cigarette when staff approach the area," Barnes said, adding that the zoo was determined to help him quit.
Barnes said the most important thing was that people stop providing Charlie with cigarettes or any other treats, noting the chimp already had three bad teeth because of all the cans of sweet soft drinks that people throw at him.
Charlie is not the only smoking chimpanzee. A zoo in the Chinese city of Zhengzhou reported last year that one of its chimps had taken up smoking and was desperately bumming cigarette butts off visitors.
I suggest taxing the chimp.
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Does the chimp actually LIGHT the cigarettes? If so, where does he keep hiding the lighters?
Visitors throw him lit cigarettes
He'll be eating Big Macs and Fries next! My Lab likes spilled beer.
poor chimp..not much to do in those enclosures. Look back at the people looking at them,have a smoke or fling poo. It's a chimp's life.
Well, I could think of worse (or better, depending on whose perspective) habits a chimp could engage in.
They've got no sense of comedy, smoking chimps are funny.
Ahhh, c'mon, the chimp isn't hurting anyone!!
Better get him some Nicorettes...
"My Lab likes spilled beer."
Wait a minute. That's the Lab that wears a pancake on her/his head, isn't it? LOL!
We had a Dachshund when I was a kid. We both grew up in Milwaukee, WI...a city that knows it's beer. You could put down a saucer of Pabst Blue Ribbon and a saucer of Miller High Life, and that dog would always pick the High Life, LOL!
My dad made a lot of bar betting money off of that dog. ;)
I used to be a zookeeper. We had a chimp who did the exact same thing. He actually looked pretty cool, holding the cigarette between index & middle finger, blowing smoke up in the air.
Now a chimp cooking up meth might worry me but cigarettes are within the chimps rights.
Yeah, got busted for smoking cigarettes. What are you in for?
He is lucky he has an outdoor gig. I hear they don't allow smoking in the cages.
I 'd rather have him smoking than "flinging poo".
Is it also possible to teach chimps to drink beer and liquor 'till they get tipsy ? I'm guessing it's easy :)
LOL. LulaBelle is a Miller Lite dog. But we don't ever let her have beer on purpose. She is a bad drunk!
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