states, including Connecticut, legally allow people to raise them as pets. Pet chimpanzees are also reservoirs of disease and can pass along infections like yellow fever, monkey pox and the Marburg virus to their human keepers.ĭespite the potential threat chimpanzees pose, many U.S. ( See pictures of the 50th running of the Daytona 500.) James Davis, who raised a chimpanzee as a pet, was attacked by escaped chimps at an animal sanctuary in 2005 he was left with injuries and disfigurement so severe that doctors kept him in a medically induced coma for three months. Attacks on human beings are rare, but they do happen and the results are often catastrophic. Though mostly vegetarian, they will also hunt and kill other animals for food young male chimpanzees in Africa have been known to fashion crude weapons and use them to hunt bushbabies for meat. Highly territorial, chimpanzees will attack and kill other chimps. Nor are wild chimpanzees the docile, childlike creatures portrayed on TV. I would not want to be standing next to one." ( See pictures of animals with prosthetic limbs.) "An adult male chimpanzee is a formidable animal. "They are incredibly powerful, and people underestimate that," says McCann. chimpanzee is five to seven times stronger than a person of the same size, especially in the upper body. Travis himself was reportedly a beloved figure around Stamford he was recognizable from television commercials, could bathe and dress himself and use a computer qualities that made him seem dangerously close to human.īut adult chimpanzees might be better described as superhuman a 200-lb. It might be hard to imagine that a chimpanzee familiar from zoos, animal shows and slapstick comedies like Cannonball Run could be capable of the kind of savage violence inflicted on Nash. This is tragic, but it's not surprising." ( See pictures of animals in space.) "They are wild animals, and all wild animals are potentially dangerous," says Colleen McCann, a primatologist with the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and New York's Bronx Zoo.
No matter how many years it has lived peacefully as a pet, a chimpanzee is not a domesticated animal and can snap without warning. The chimp was shot dead by a police officer, who was also attacked.īut even as investigators try to figure out exactly what triggered Travis's attack (he had been suffering from Lyme disease, which in rare cases is linked to psychotic behavior), the reality is that a chimpanzee living among people is simply a ticking time bomb. The victim's injuries were reportedly gruesome the head paramedic who treated Nash on the scene told the New York Times that he had "never seen anything this dramatic on a living patient." Nash remains in extremely critical condition. ( See pictures of animals facing extinction.) The 14-year-old chimpanzee latched onto Nash's face and tore it apart. But when Charla Nash, 55, a friend of Herold's, visited on Monday afternoon, Travis suddenly lashed out at her. chimp named Travis, whose owner, Sandra Herold, 70, raised him as part of her own family, had no history of violence aside from one incident in 2003, when he escaped and stopped traffic in Stamford for hours. Astonishingly, his victim, Charla Nash, survived, but you could argue that in many ways, her life too came to an abrupt end that day.Follow ferocious attack by a chimpanzee of a woman in Stamford, Conn., on Feb. I can’t … He’s eating her! He’s eating her! Please! God! Please! Where are they? Where are they?” “Gun! They got to shoot him! Please! Please! Hurry! Hurry! Please! I can’t. “He-he ripped her face off! He's eating her face! "He ripped her apart! Hurry up! Hurry up! Please!” Herold breathlessly replies.
"Tell me, what is the monkey doing?," the operator asks as Travis's harrowing, almost gleeful, wails and screeches echo down the line. It's hard to know what is more chilling about Sandra Herold's 911 call - hearing her helpless sobbing as she reveals her pet chimp is "eating" her friend's face, or the ape's frenzied screams in the background.įor an excruciating 12 minutes, Sandra is heard pleading for police to rush to her home to shoot dead Travis, the animal she had raised as her own son for the previous 14 years, reports the Daily Star.
0 kommentar(er)
