Chimp Trainer's Daughter

A great blog documenting all sides of the primates-as-pets/performers issue.

A favorite feature:  The Hall of Fame and Shame

Canary Islands Chaos

British holidaymakers were caught up in chaotic scenes at a zoo in the Canary Islands when three chimpanzees escaped their enclosure and attacked and injured three people, one seriously.

The three rescue animals - called King, Cheeta and Felipa - went on the rampage on Friday at the popular Oasis Park in Fueteventura, with police eventually having to shoot them with live ammunition after attempts to tranquilize them failed.

Two of the chimps, King and Felipa, were killed, while Cheeta survived after emergency treatment from vets.

44 million Americans are uninsured.

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Chimpanzee Funeral

The chimpanzees quieted their usual chatter and simply stood, holding one another silently as they bid goodbye to their friend. Understandably, human onlookers were touched, particularly since they knew this wasn't the first emotional separation the chimpanzees had experienced.

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i

Wonder what would have happened if the fence wasn't there.

Probably THIS.

Say Cheese, Travis. Or Not.

An attorney says a Connecticut woman whose chimpanzee mauled and blinded her friend has died.
Robert Golger says his client, Sandy Herold, died Monday night of a ruptured aortic aneurysm. Herold owned a 200-pound (90-kilogram) chimpanzee named Travis who went berserk in February 2009 after Herold asked her friend, Charla Nash, to help lure it back into her house in Stamford. The animal ripped off Nash's hands, nose, lips and eyelids. Nash recently underwent a preliminary evaluation to determine whether she is a potential candidate for a face and hand transplant at a Harvard-affiliated hospital. Nash's family has sued Herold for $50 million and wants to sue the state for $150 million. The family says state officials failed to prevent the attack.


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Haunted By Travis

In an interview in Stamford police headquarters on Tuesday, Officer Chiafari, 53, a husband and a father of three, described that day and the crippling depression and anxiety that followed. He was haunted not just by the frightening encounter with the bloody and enraged chimp who outweighed him by 50 pounds, but also by images of the victim in the driveway. "I’d go to the mall and see women and imagine them without faces," he said.

Officer Chiafari required therapy but was denied a worker’s compensation claim. The reason was that harrowing episodes involving a person — shooting a suspect, for example — would be covered but similar encounters with animals were not.


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The Murders in the Rue Morgue

By Berni Wrightson.

Chimp vs. Pacman

Ms. Pacman to be exact.

I don't want to be around when he sees "Game Over."

Watch the video here.

Travis Update II

An Ohio hospital has told the family of a Connecticut woman mauled and blinded by a chimpanzee a year ago that it cannot perform a face and hand transplant for her, a family attorney said Monday.

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Attempted Rape (Update)

X-rays from the previously-mentioned attack at a Russian Zoo.


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Simple Math

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Travis Update

Against all odds, Charla survived the brutal attack though the chimp broke most of the bones in her face and ripped off her nose, lips, eyes and hands. A large portion of her scalp is missing, she only has one thumb, and doctors have created a hole in her face for her to get fluids through a straw.


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Bubbles

Jacko's treasured pet chimp was a source of joy to the singer and drew a lot of mockery from the media. The chimpanzee lived with Jackson through the 80's and accompanied the singer to movie premieres, parties, and recording sessions. The pair often dressed in similar outfits.
Bubbles: Looking bleached and wealthy.

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Feeding Time

The animals escaped from 'Chimp Island' and found their way into a keeper area where their food is prepared, the zoo said.

Looters.

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Exorcist Leopard Getting Attacked

Click the image to watch:


Fidel Castro in the hidden control room is a gas.

Board Room

Write Your Congressman!

...to squash this bill:

The Great Ape Protection Act, recently reintroduced in Congress, would phase out invasive research on chimpanzees. This overdue legislation would prohibit isolation, social deprivation, and other procedures detrimental to the health and psychological well-being of chimpanzees. It would also require the release of federally owned chimpanzees to sanctuaries and make permanent the federal moratorium on breeding chimpanzees for research.

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Don't Trust Them

How To Survive An Attack

Step 1: Be wary
Be wary of chimps older than eight; that’s when they start to become volatile. A full-grown chimp, standing 3 to 5 feet tall and weighing up to 250 pounds, has five to ten times the strength of a same-size human being.
Male chimps seek to establish dominance over their family during adolescence, making them especially dangerous between ages 8 and 17.

Step 2: Don't underestimate them
Don’t underestimate their intelligence. The two male chimps that attacked a couple in 2005 got out of their cage by picking the lock.

Step 3: Don't show fear
If you think you’re in danger of being attacked, don’t show fear. Chimps don’t pick fights they don’t think they can win. If a chimp believes you have dominance, they’re less likely to attack.

Step 4: Protect your face
If a chimp makes a move toward you, protect your face: It’s the first thing they’ll go after. They also target fingers, hands, feet, testicles, noses, and ears. If you’re attacked, try to curl up into a ball to make those areas difficult to reach.

Step 5: Wear gear
If you’re going to be around an adult chimp, don the protective gear that animal handlers wear – face masks, goggles, rubber gloves, and boots.


Slight miscalculation.

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Attempted Rape

"When I tried to pass a banana to him, the chimpanzee grabbed my hand and pulled me into the cage and tried to rape me," said Valentina. She was only saved when her screams brought other keepers running. One keeper said: "It's a serious matter. If that had been a member of the public we would all be in court by now."


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Super Deluxe

Scariest costume EVER.


I'd carry around a rubber human body part to make it believable and accurate. Maybe just a latex mask like I tore off a face.

Buy your own HERE.

$50,000 Disease Factory

Chimpanzee breeders are in the business of selling chimpanzees (~$50,000 each) not educating their customers about the hazards of pet ownership.

ALL primates potentially carry diseases deadly to humans including Herpes B, Yellow Fever, Monkeypox, Ebola virus, Marburg virus, SIV, HIV and tuberculosis.

A chimp about to paint the town red [with Fever].

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Not So Scary Now

Sure he is.


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Higher Learning

The not-so-hated orangutan showing how superior they can be(when compared to chimpanzees).

The ape, a 27-year-old female named Karta, jammed a stick into wires connected to the fence and then piled up debris to climb a concrete and glass wall at the Adelaide Zoo.


In this undated photo, an orangutan plots an escape (after breakfast).

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Monkey Dreams

As in, what if you have a dream about a chimpanzee. Here's what it means from an online Dream Dictionary:
To see a chimpanzee in your dream, suggests that what you thought was true is actually not. You are being mislead by your intelligence or that you may be over-thinking an issue.


A possible dream containing chimpanzees.

Source: Dream Dictionary

Marriage Counseling

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Chimp Care For Dummies

From Ehow.com:
Chimp-proof your home by making sure anything breakable or valuable is in a safe place when the chimpanzee is free.
Clean and disinfect the chimpanzee's space daily. He'll urinate, defecate and possibly masturbate over everything. Be ready.

Make sure there's sunlight for the chimp to provide essential vitamin D; otherwise, provide the vitamin D orally.

Don't leave the chimpanzee unwatched while she's free.


They forgot:
Fasten a neck choke explosive device around your chimpanzee's neck (as seen in the film THE RUNNING MAN) to be detonated if your chimpanzee glances at you in a hungry fashion.



Full instructions here.

8 Feet Tall And Full Of Muscle

Some locals say they are eight feet tall and weigh 20 stone. Others claim they are even bigger, equipped with huge flesh-ripping teeth and muscles capable of dismembering a man.
Forest dwellers have told visiting explorers and scientists of a ferocious grey ape, with the cunning of a chimpanzee and the power and size of a gorilla - and a taste for meat rather than the shrubbery loved by most apes.
For, unlike most apes, these are predators - capable of hunting not only forest antelope but, incredibly, lion and leopard too. And to cap it all, like wolves, these fearsome beasts howl at the Moon.


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Cinder

Cinder the hairless ape proving why these animals are capable of shredding us if they want to - solid muscle. Thanks, Cinder.


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Meat Market

"We found that females copulated more frequently with males who shared meat with them at least on one occasion, than with males who never shared meat with them, indicating that sharing meat with females improved a males' mating success," the report said.

A man unknowingly shares meat with a female chimpanzee.

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More Projectiles

A zoo worker placed herself in a blind to observe the chimpanzee's behaviour and found that, for five consecutive days before the opening of the zoo, Santino gathered stones from the water and placed them in the caches.
The following year, the chimpanzee added pieces of concrete to his ammunition, and was observed gently knocking on concrete rocks to break off smaller, disc-shaped pieces.
Since the initial finding, caretakers at the zoo have removed hundreds of caches.

A cache of deadly projectiles intended for human targets.

They should have had Stone Day at the zoo and issued a rock to every visitor to throw at this scheming menace.

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Projectiles

Nandita Mondol, a resident of Naihati, had come to the zoo with her family and was standing near the chimpanzee enclosure along with hundreds of people when one of the primates hurled a stone at the crowd. The stone hit Mondol in her forehead and she sustained minor injuries. She was rushed to the zoo office for first aid but could not get any.


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Taxi

Police are hunting 27 chimpanzees that escaped from a Sierra Leone preserve and attacked the occupants of a taxi, killing the driver.


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My Personal Hell

Pure terror. Poor cat's probably afraid to tell the chimp he's causing chafing.

Click on the image for animated horror.

Drunk

Chimpanzees in western Uganda are increasingly raiding illegal brewing operations in forested river valleys and getting drunk on the country beer. Once intoxicated, they become hostile and attack and at times kill human children, parks officials say.

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Novel

It was a dark and stormy night and my human captor, who lovingly cared for me since my infancy, was reaching for me. Reaching for me with those ten pink snacks, each with a red-painted tip. I shall bite them off...

Infanticide

This touching moment [for chimp lovers, that is] won't last very long:

Alerted to the killings by sounds of chimpanzee screams, the researchers directly observed one infanticide, and found strong circumstantial evidence for two others. Evidence suggested that in two of the cases, the killings were perpetrated by groups of resident females against "stranger" females from outside the resident group. Infants were taken from the mothers, who were injured in at least two of the attacks; in at least one case, adult males in the area exhibited displaying behavior, with one old male unsuccessfully attempting to separate the females.


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Who Would Kill This Cutie?

Chimps, that's who.

The researchers saw 10 different chimps fashioning spear-like tools to forcibly jab at nocturnal primates known as lesser bushbabies (Galago senegalensis), which sleep inside hollow branches or tree trunks during the day. After their attacks, the chimps sniffed or licked their weapons, as if to see whether or not they shed blood.

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Chimp Mountain

His friend's hand was a mangled mess, most of it was gone. The station wagon had stalled after the driver desperately tried to ram through a gate. And now the chimpanzee that had attacked them on an isolated mountain road in West Africa was coming at them again.

The chimp "went across the top of the car, and that's when . . . it was just a flurry trying to get away from it. Melvin got pulled out of the car by it."


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In The Cards

Prepare to lose [your arm].

Anatomy Of A Tomato Butt

What evolutionary factors led to THIS disaster?

Christmas Wish

A coworker of mine brought her child to the office a few days before Christmas. She told her kid to tell us what she wanted from Santa. She sheepishly replied "A monkey."


I turned and asked her if she meant one of those tiny ones or a chimp. She informed me she was wishing for a chimpanzee.

You can bet I educated her on the dangers of owning one of those killers.

St. James Davis

In the melee, one of the chimps dug in his claws and ripped the skin off the right side of St. James's face, causing it to flop over and cover his left eye, temporarily blinding him. One of the primates sunk his teeth into St. James's skull. He then closed his jaws on St. James's mouth, ripping off his lips and most of his teeth.

Full Story.

Humanzee

"You could send him on chores. He would take the wheelbarrow and empty the hay and straw from the stalls. And when it was time to feed the dogs, he would get the pans, and mix the dog food for me. I'd get it ready and he'd mix it,'' she said. As he grew older, Oliver also acquired habits normally enjoyed only by humans, including a cup of coffee and a nightcap. "This guy, Oliver, he enjoyed sitting down at night and having a drink, and watching television. He'd mix his own. He'd pour a shot of whiskey and put some Seven-Up in there, stir it and drink it,'' she recalled.

I can just picture Oliver setting his empty brandy snifter down, slowly getting up from the love seat, quietly shutting the television off, ...and turning to kill me.


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Eating Children

At least eight children have died in the past seven years in Uganda and Tanzania after being taken by chimpanzees, and a further eight injured. The children were found with limbs and other parts of their bodies chewed off.

Dr Gavin said that the technique used by the chimps to kill or maim the children mirrors the way they tear apart other prey, suggesting that they snatched the human young to eat. “In most cases they bite off the limbs first before disemboweling them, just as they would the red colobus monkey which is one of their favourite prey,” he said.

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I Just Smoke Socially

Nicotine + Five Times Human Strength + Cold Turkey = Dead Humans

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.

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Butt Ugly

Remember the first time you saw a monkey butt?
That's a show-stopper for sure. Probably at the zoo, right?

"Mommy, what's THAT?!"
"That's a monkey, dear."
"NO, THAT!!!"

No wonder they wear diapers and tutu's. It's the best kept secret of the animal kingdom.


Monkeys have tomato butts.

Who Me?

Yeah you.

Bad Move

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