fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2640 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2640 ⌋

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Yeah, it happens more frequently than people realize. One man who was visiting a chimpanzee shelter was attacked by escaped chimps and had his genitals ripped off, along with chunks of his thigh and face. And then there's incidents of chimpanzees stealing and killing babies:

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0304/feature4/online_extra2.html

I'd never keep one as a pet and never approach one, wild or not.

Why the hell did they end that article with an optimistic "he's on the mend after we gave him life-saving medicine" when midway through it they describe a horrific killing of a 15 month old human baby?

Why give it medical aid in the first place? A super aggressive wild chimp described by *Jane Goodall* as a bully that single-handedly decimated a large chunk of a population of other primates near him and killed a baby. Even if they didn't want to put it down there wasn't any reason to save it.

I didn't get an optimistic tone from it, just factual.

They did say the disease was "probably" human-borne, though I'm still not sure it was the right course of action. It's not like it was an epidemic.

That said, just because an animal attacks a human isn't alone a good reason to kill it - the death was unspeakably horrific, but he's a chimpanzee, and the child was brought, against the rules, into his territory. If he were invading human "territory" and attacking people it would paint a completely different picture and I would not hesitate to say he should be euthanized or at least restrained.

ayrt

I agree that a wild animal attacking a human that's invaded it's territory isn't reason to kill it and the baby was there against the rules - but in this case I think there might be cause for it.

The people were on a path so other humans in that area would be familiar to the chimp (I don't know much about them but I assume they're intelligent enough to deduce that) and the chimp ran up, alone, to a *group* of humans and snatched the baby out of a harness on one of their torsos. This wasn't a case of a toddler straggling behind or wandering a bit away, the articles said the baby was still held and bound to that girl when the chimp took her. In combination with it's previously known extreme aggression toward other animals I think at the very least they should have just let it die of the disease it got.

In combination with it's previously known extreme aggression toward other animals I think at the very least they should have just let it die of the disease it got.

After some thought I'm in favor of doing that anyway, since it can't be proven that the disease he got was human-borne. That, combined with the danger he posed, probably would have made leaving him (or euthanizing him when it was clear he would die on his own) a better choice.

That's just from what I know, though - I'm not an expert or super well-informed.

Edited 2014-03-27 15:15 (UTC)

I see your point, but the problem is that attacking babies/children isn't an isolated incident that only this one chimpanzee does. It's a problem that chimpanzees have in general-- something about a primate its size or smaller are viewed as a threat and triggers an instinctive fight response. It's horrible, but it's not the chimpanzee's fault. That's why there were rules about no kids near the chimpanzees' territory.

ayrt:
I did see in the article that this is a behavior in chimps in general (shudder), but I think there are some serious problems with this specific incident. Sure there were rules banning children for good reason, but this one attacked a group/pair of people.

As it was previously known to be very aggressive to other animals and humans alike, and taking the baby from the harness/arms of the girl rather than this being an instance where the child wandered off, they should have done something.

Holy shit, that is awful. :((((

[ SECRET POST #2640 ]

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