Zoo chimps attack visitors

[SaintLouieWoman]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/47363062...attack-humans/

Zoos have to make accomodations for stick and poo flinging primates. At the St Louis Zoo, where I volunteered for 20 years, they actually had a bamboo screen with peepholes at an overlook where the gorillas regularly pelted visitors. I'm sure the primates weren't thrilled that the visitors had a shield.

Follow the link, as it tells of a remarkable old chimp, the dominant one in the group. The violent aspect of the chimp attacks isn't particularly a revelation. I had ongoing debates with a girl at my former job who kept saying she wanted to buy a chimp and have matching outfits with it. She obviously wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer. I kept explaining how they'd grow up and really hurt her. This was shortly before the story of the chimp tearing off a woman's face. She conceded finally that maybe I had a point.

[Rockntractor]

Do they chew their nails?

[Starbuck]

I heard a knowledgeable source say that he would rather fight anything other than a chimp. He explained that your face and hands will go first, because the chimp expects you to use those to fight with.

[Articulate_Ape]

I heard a knowledgeable source say that he would rather fight anything other than a chimp. He explained that your face and hands will go first, because the chimp expects you to use those to fight with.

Smart man, your source.

[Odysseus]

I wonder if he recently converted to Islam?

Zoo chimp makes elaborate plots to attack humans
By Jennifer Viegas
5/9/2012 7:40:30 PM ET MSN.com

"Santino," a male chimpanzee at Furuvik Zoo in Sweden, is devising increasingly complex attacks against zoo visitors.

At first Santino was famous for throwing rocks and other projectiles at visitors who annoyed him. Now he has improved his technique, which requires spontaneous innovation for future deception. Researcher Mathias Osvath, lead author of a paper about Santino in PLoS ONE, explained what the clever chimp did:

"After a visitor group had left the compound area, Santino went inside the enclosure and brought a good-sized heap of hay that he placed near the visitor's section, and immediately after that he put stones under it," Osvath said.

"He also appeared to have placed projectiles behind, just before he went in after the hay. After this, he sat down beside the hay and waited. When the visitors came back, he waited until they were close by and, without any preceding display, he threw stones at the crowd."

Osvath, who is the scientific director of the Lund University Primate Research Station Furuvik, and colleague Elin Karvonen noticed the behavior while studying the elderly chimp, who is the dominant male in his exhibit at the Swedish zoo.

The calculated surprise attacks on visitors demonstrate very advanced thinking usually only associated with humans.

Osvath said, "What is interesting is that he made these preparations when the visitors were out of sight, and also that he incorporated innovations into the behavior."

"What makes this a bit special is that he actually had not experienced before what he seemed to anticipate," Osvath added. "He, in a sense, produced a future outcome instead of just preparing for a scenario that had previously been re-occurring reliably."

Beware. The monkey jihad has begun...