They have...
Posted on 05/02/2006 10:48:15 PM PDT by beaversmom
Chimpanzees are supposed to be the "good" apes, cute and funny, the hairy little people depicted in thousands of films and TV shows. But recent news out of western Africa shows they can be brutally fierce.
A chimp attacked and killed a Sierra Leone man who was driving Americans to a wildlife refuge Sunday. Another man lost part of his hand in the attack.
Some news reports said a group of up to 20 chimps that had broken out of their enclosures gang-attacked the men, while other stories have pinned responsibility on one animal, possibly a chimp named Bruno, the undisputed alpha male of the Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary. The powerful ape reportedly punched out a window of the taxicab the men were in and assaulted the driver, Issu Kanu, before attacking the passengers.
"This thing was on a rampage, and it acted like it wanted to kill every one of us," Gary Brown, one of the Americans in the cab, told an Austin, Texas, TV station recently. "And it had hatred in its eyes."
Hardly the behavior we would expect from Tarzan's little pal Cheetah, or Zira and Cornelius, the benevolent chimp scientists from "Planet of the Apes." But such attacks are not unprecedented.
BBC Wildlife magazine reported in 2004 that chimp attacks on people in Uganda had increased, with 15 children either mauled or killed in the past seven years. Since the 1960s, only six such attacks had been recorded in that region of Africa, according to the report.
Last year, a man narrowly escaped death when two male chimps attacked him at a California sanctuary. The victim, St. James Davis, and his wife had gone to visit Moe, the chimp they had taught to wear clothes, take showers, use the toilet and watch television, the Los Angeles Times reported. Moe had been banished to the sanctuary after he bit a woman.
The Davises had arrived with a cake to celebrate Moe's birthday when two other male chimps who had escaped from their cages attacked. St. James Davis lost all the fingers from both hands, an eye and parts of his nose, cheeks, lips and buttocks. His genitals also were mutilated, according to news reports. A relative of the sanctuary owners shot the animals to death before they could kill Davis.
"I had no idea a chimpanzee was capable of doing that to a human," Kern County Fire Capt. Curt Merrell said at the time.
They certainly have the strength. An adult male chimpanzee may be only 4 feet tall and weigh 110 pounds, but he is at least five times as strong as a man.
That chimps can be homicidal should not be surprising. Biologically, they are the closest animals to humans, sharing more than 98 percent of the same DNA with our far more deadly species.
Still, attacks on humans remain rare, and the cause of the Sierra Leone incident is unknown. It's possible, chimp expert Anne Pusey said in a recent interview, that Bruno and his mates were displaying territorial aggression. Male chimps patrol their territory in bands and will sometimes kill males from neighboring groups. Typically, a few animals will hold a lone victim down while the others beat and tear at it.
"This attack seems quite a lot like what they sometimes do to each other," said Pusey, professor of ecology, evolution and behavior at the University of Minnesota.
Pusey also is head of the Jane Goodall Institute's Center for Primate Studies, named for a woman who is well known for her pioneering work with chimps in Tanzania. Goodall's website, www.janegoodall.org, sounds warnings about the loss of habitat that has greatly diminished the number of wild chimpanzees.
A major cause of the human-chimp confrontations in Uganda, according to the BBC Wildlife Magazine article, is the increasing proximity of farms to the chimps' forest habitat. Also, people in Africa kill chimps for meat, and the hunters will sometimes take in the orphaned babies to keep or sell. The young chimps are cute and cuddly, but beyond about 5 years old, most cannot be easily controlled. Abused and abandoned, the chimps sometimes end up in sanctuaries like the one in Sierra Leone, but their negative experiences with their original captors is another possible motivation for the Tacugama attack, Pusey said.
"These chimps have had a bad life," she said.
"We humanize them, but we're referring to wild animals here," the sanctuary's director, Bala Amarasekaran, told Reuters. "Some chimps are highly territorial and can attack and kill. They may have seen these people as intruders."
People are ultimately responsible for a situation in which the apes are being squeezed from their natural homes, Pusey said.
"They're meant to be out in the forest," she said. "We shouldn't be taking them away from there."
It sounds like the chimps are learning to defend themselves and considering humans in the same light as stranger chimps. Good thing they haven't learned how to shoot yet.
In cold weather, chimps have often been observed huddling close to abandoned camp fires. If they ever learn to add fresh firewood and run amuck with a flaming brand, all bets are off.
LOL...yep we have the guns, we have the numbers...i SAW THE FILMS!!!
LETS PARTY PAL!!!!
I suspect Bruno knew that taxi was causing global warming.
...possibly a chimp named Bruno, the undisputed alpha male...
Possibly Al Gore's latest incarnation?
If not yet possibly soon. Al and Bruno or Al as Bruno.
You're being sarcastic, but read these stories:
Socialist Gov’t in Spain to Grant Great Apes “Human Rights”
Good thing they don't know how to shoot guns ....ooops!
Yes you are right--they discuss that case a little bit in second half of the article.
Sorry.I worked in Africa. Chimps and baboons are cute babies. Then they grow up and become very aggressive. To know them is to hate them.
The local baboons would attack those guarding the fields, even women and smaller men, to steal corn.
The only thing that stopped them was when the local priest, who was allowed to have a rifle, would go out, shoot a couple, and we'd place the bodies around the fields.
That usually discouraged them for a couple weeks. They may be aggressive but they're not suicidal.
Al Gore? No, he's too busy attempting to kill Man-Bear-Pig.
I'm Serial! heh
This should come as no surprise to anyone who knows anything about chimpanzees. They are territorial, aggressive, and omnivorous, killing and eating monkeys and other small animals. I'm not saying we should kill them all (definitely not), but people need to be wary of them and some villages may need to shoot some. There have been several stories recently about groups of chimps stealing and killing babies.
A few days ago on CNN, I saw an account by one of the American survivors of the attack in Sierra Leone. I don't know if it was the Gary Brown mentioned in this piece but whoever it was, you could see that he were still very, very traumatized. His story was chilling and totally terrifying. So much so, that it looked to me as if Miles O'Brien who was doing the remote interview, seemed completely taken aback and shocked. I even saw the ape expert that they had there to comment of the behavior patterns of chimps, swallow hard a few times. It was a real life horror movie type happening.
Militant, jihadist, insurgent Monkeys. They get more Human every day!
The truth is that wild animals are wild. Their behavior is unpredictable. Don't rely on so-called expert advice about animal behavior. "A bear will never hurt you unless you come between a female bear and her cubs."... "You are perfectly safe if you simply play dead while being attacked."...
Actually, I think it was the "new buddies" that were jealous and ripped the poor man's face off, not the original chimp. Maybe someone out there has the story link.
The chimps used in movies are invariably juveniles. Adult chimps can reach 70-80 kilos and are often quite aggressive -- hell, they kill and eat monkeys, up to and including baboons.
Too much trying to attribute human characteristics to animals. People here are treating dogs and cats like little children with birthday celebrations and Christmas presents. The real animal world is not Disney.
Reporter: "And in other news, Sierra Leone has joined the Coalition of the Willing... wait... I'm sorry... the Chimps of Sierra Leone have joined the Coalition of the Willing..."
You are correct. They were visiting their chimp Moe for his birthday. They had brought him a cake. Somehow 4 chimps escaped--two males and two females. I think it was the males that went bananas. BTW--Moe was incarcerated at this sanctuary--what for? For biting off a finger of a woman. Gloria Allred had been the couple's attorney when Moe was having his problems and after the attack. If I'm remembering correctly, they were fighting his incarceration.
Okay, I know what these chimps did St. James Davis was not funny--they could have killed him, but one funny line I read at the time from a FReeper was "Maybe they should have just sent him a card".
Baby chimps are cute and all, but they aren't humans and they aren't pets.
This is the guy's wife:
Woman attacked by chimp speaks of the attack
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