Earl, was it the Tacugama incident? I saw that recently on Animal Planet and it was another pretty horrific attack.
[QUOTE=SurrenderDorothy;10846278This whole story makes me so mad… including the “CRAZED CHIMP” headlines. He was doing what he was naturally programmed to do. [/QUOTE]
Ever since I heard about Travis I’ve been thinking of what Chris Rock and Wanda Sykes, in separate interviews, said when Roy (of Siegfried &) was attacked. Others were mourning this as “such a wonderful man, such a terrible accident”, while to me Rock and Sykes were the duet of reason.
(The latter was possibly the funniest line I heard that year, though you’d have to see/hear the completely conversational and “let’s cut the sympathetic bullshit” delivery of it to really understand why.)
My sympathies with the neighbor, and even to the poor horribly nutty owner since I know she’s going through hell and there’s nothing that can be undone about the situation, but hopefully this will at least prompt some legislation. In Alabama (and many other states) it was legal as of a few years ago and may still be to keep alligators/lions/tigers/bears/etc./as pets, but it was illegal to keep a wolf-hybrid dog {anecdotal only, but every wolf hybrid dog I ever met was one of the most good natured animals ever- the dog totally trumped the wolf}).
There’s a really good section on this in Yann Martel’s novel The Life of Pi. The title character’s father is a zookeeper and is explaining to him the dangers of each animal. His father warns him to keep away from all wild animals but tells him one of the most dangerous beasts in the zoo to humans is the ostrich, which can kill a bodybuilder in half a second with one kick. When I was still listening to this book on CD I remember driving past a famous farm in Alabama where ostriches roam around in the pasture.
Yes, I’d much rather die than live the rest of my life in this state. Poor woman.
I was thinking that as well, but I felt weird about posting it. But she was so mutilated that the police couldn’t even recognize that the victim was female. I mean, oh my god. I can’t imagine that.
Why why WHY do people keep pets like this? Don’t they read about how bad the attacks can be? Or do they just think, “My little [insert chimp name] isn’t like that! he’s my furbaby!”?
It’s only six weeks into the new year, but you win the best user name for posting in this thread award for sure!
It’s so horrible that I’d want to sue the doctors who saved my life.
I blame stupidity by the chimp owner first and foremost for this incident, and then of course the devil, George Bush, and the Jews, but the media’s on the list somewhere. They go out of their way to anthropomorphize apes into a cross between adorable little scamps and dogs. Ellie May’s chimps on Beverly Hillbillies come to mind (you saw them in sailor suits and hillbilly outfits and they never seemed to get bigger and you never saw them humping Duke or throwing excrement at Jed or saw them sense anger and rip off Mrs. Drysdale’s left boob in a state of rage), or Lancelot Link (where Bernie Kopell lost three of his testicles when one of the chimps watched the dailies) or episodes of other shows where due to some convoluted circumstances the (usually teenaged) main character has to take a chimp home and it gets into trouble but of the adorable kind more than the spreading feces on the wall and killing the neighbor’s baby.
When I was a kid I used to love to watch the Berosini Orangutans on talk shows and benefits (and IIRC they had their own short lived show). Then some years later, by which time I’d mostly forgotten about them, and while they were still raking in big bucks in Vegas, a tape was leaked showing Berosini backstage beating the bejeezus out of the apes. I’m surprised that he still has a face, but I suppose they were sufficiently scared of him. He still kept his career for years, but mostly in Branson and in a traveling act, and he earned millions. (One of his graduates from his act was Buddah, who played Clyde in the Every Which Way but Loose films and according to allegations was seriously abused including by baseball bats; in interest of fairness, Eastwood used the same tactics to get a good performance and funny faces out of Ruth Gordon in the same movie, but the difference was it was at her request.)
ETA: Disturbing video of the Berosini abuse and other primate “trainers” (not a joke, the real thing). I’m not sure if it’s true that the chimp’s “smile” is really fear, but it’s definitely not “that’s funny”.
Anyone remember Judy from Daktari?
Minor hijack to fight ignorance:
The research that suggests that bonobos are peace-loving, happy, oversexed hippy apes is probably flawed. The bonobo troupe that was being observed was almost entirely composed of captive, adolescent individuals with no adults or wild-born individuals to model behavior. (Think what a group of horny teenage humans would be doing with no parental supervision.) Wild bonobos seem to act pretty similarly to chimps.
Article here, but it’s quite long.
Reenacting Lord of the Flies?!?!
Given your mention of orangutans being abused by trainers, I feel obliged to remind y’all of Birutė Galdikas, who related in (I think) Reflections on Eden the tale of a juvenile orangutan who raped her cook.
Sampiro, I think you slightly misstate the problem of the media’s presentation apes. It’s not simply that movies & tv shows anthropomorophize them; it’s that they present them in the image of an imaginary version of humans, i.e., of humans not prone to violence and sin. We’re not angels, and neither are are primate cousins.
Well, Kim the Rhymer’s an angel, and my stepdaughter and my favorite niece. But most of the rest of us are scum.
Not scum. Very powerful primates.
No human would have done that.
Prosecution rests.
I’m thinking one person with a personal firearm could have been of great service hear.
Has PETA blamed the victim yet?
latest report i’ve heard has said that the woman while still in critical condition has been moved to the cleveland clinic. the clinic that earlier this year had done a facial transplant.
in another article the woman who had the chimp at her house is one very odd human. she took baths with the chimp?! just baffling…
Or maybe one of those armed bears you guys are always talking about.
Yeah, but it’s doubtful they were being kept as pets on the farm you saw.
That’s horrible and crass and I can’t stop laughing.
Thanks for the article. It was here on the Dope that I questioned the Bonobo thing and was soundly defeated. It was too good to be true. 
I saw on a news crawl today that the victims condition was described by doctors as “stable but critical.” I’ve never seen that before. I’m guessing it means: “She’s not going to die, but since her hands and face have been ripped off, ‘stable’ doesn’t really justice to this situation.”