Ever been close to an adult tiger in an enclosed space? The smell, nay the stink will close down your sinuses made make your eyes water.
An aside: Why are there even animals that I thought were endangered being sold to roadside zoos and idiots who take them to weddings?
The thing is, tigers and lions breed prolificly in captivity. The problem for big cats in the wild isn’t that they don’t breed enough, the problem is habitat destruction. There just isn’t enough wilderness left for big cats due to human encroachment. So the problem for tigers isn’t that there aren’t enough tigers, it’s that there’s no place to put the tigers. And that goes for both wild and captive tigers. Zoos and such will flat-out refuse to accept captive bred cats from backyard exotic pet owners who realize that they can’t handle their pet, because any zoo that has space for tigers is already full up. If you start up a tiger sanctuary today, by tomorrow noon you’ll have 20 people beating down your door trying to place their unwanted tigers.
It’s odd that even though an ape brain is miles above and beyond a cat’s, it’s probably easier to housebreak the latter, because of its natural instincts regarding elimination. Chimps or gorillas, with their relatively nomadic forest lifestyle, tend to go whenever and wherever.
In fact, gorillas fleeing from something scary–human poachers for example–sometimes leave “fear trails”, or tracks of droppings literally scared out of them.
And oh yeah: BAND NAME!
At the Yerkes Primate Research Center, I read about two cases of chimpanzees killing handlers. One was killed outright, the other was so disfigured he committed suicide.
And Bubbles is famous as the second most dangerous primate at Neverland.
Regards,
Shodan
I wonder if there are any primates, apes, or other simians that are reasonably domesticable. Maybe I’ll start a similar thread later.
As Spectre points out, one of the big problems with primates is housebreaking. Primates are usually arboreal. And when you live in a tree and take a dump, what happens to the crap? It falls to the ground. And so primates as a group tend to have very casual notions about elimination. Just go whenever you like, and gravity gets rid of it for you.
Animals that can be housebroken typically have some sort of den or home that they don’t want to fill up with crap. And so they have a natural instinct to go outside to eliminate. A puppy is easy to train to go outside the house to pee because a wolf cub will go outside the den to pee. Rabbits can be housebroken, cats can be housebroken, ferrets can be housebroken. But the animal has to have some sort of already existing instinct about only eliminating at appropriate places and times. If that instinct doesn’t already exist, forget about housebreaking. In other words, if you bring your horse inside, get used to stepping over horse apples.
On the plus side, primates are often highly social animals, and if you understand them you can take advantage of their social instincts, just like humans can exploit a dog’s natural social behavior.
On the other down side, primates have opposable thumbs.
You would be wrong.
the term “fear trail” is fantastic! so much more expressive than “so scared i xxxxx my pants”. i vote for way more use.
jayjay, i worked for a summer at the zoo and asked tons of questions of the keepers. i learned quite a few interesting zoo tidbits.
I was bitten by a monkey in Barbados. It was an orphan vervet monkey (they’re feral on the island), and it was being kept by a woman at the field station where I was staying. When I arrived, another woman had just gotten stitches because the monkey had bit her in the face just below her eye. For whatever reason, they still allowed the monkey to roam loose at times.
On the day I was packing to leave, the monkey came into my room and started eating from a bag of raisins. I grabbed the bag and threw it across the room, figuring that the monkey would either a) leave or b) chase the raisins. I didn’t anticipate option c)–it screamed and ran over to bite me on the leg after I’d retreated.
The owner came and got it, and I closed the door to my room. Five minutes later, it appeared at the window, which was covered with open slats but no screen. I went up to wave my hands at it, thinking I could scare it off. Instead it came through the window and leapt onto my head, then tried to bite me in the eyes. Thank goodness he was still a little guy, and I was strong enough to hold him back. All I can say is that it is NOT fun to be face to face with a monkey trying to gouge your eyes out with its teeth.
I’ve been around a lot of domestic animals in my life, and I’ve gotten the usual scratches and bites. But I have never had an animal come back for revenge like that. Very, very creepy, and I now have no desire to be around monkeys or apes unless there are bars between us.
I’ve visited people who kept orangutans and from what I’ve seen the females of all ages tend to be gentle (but strong) and the males seem to be friendly at least through early adolescence. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a reliable report of a human being seriously injured by an orangutan.
I was always told that the doctor who was the pediatrician for my siblings and me also cared for the young apes at the St. Louis Zoo. Although my parents would joke about almost anything, I know they were serious about this. They thought it was funny, but they were also rather proud that they’d found such an outstanding man to tend to their children.
I’m not finding anything on the web about it, but that isn’t entirely surprising; it was a long time ago. If anyone is inclined to exercise their searching skills, here are some hints. His name is/was (don’t know if he’s still alive or not) Dr. Robert Friedman. I believe his middle initial was ‘M’. He was a WWII veteran. He took care of us around the 1955-1970 timeframe. And, of course, you’d be looking for a connection with the St. Louis Zoo. Unless someone can find some evidence, this post has to count as just a strange, unsubstantiated claim.
Also, evolution tends to take away characteristics that are no longer needed, but are costly in terms of nutrition needed to fuel them, or that have become liabilities in a changing environment. Flight in birds is very costly and requires them to consume great amounts of calorie-rich food; bird species on small islands tend to become flightless if there are no native predators. Then somebody brings a pet cat, and blammo!
We humans used to have the same bone density and relative muscular strength of chimps, allowing for differences in body structure here and there, but we lost it as our brains evolved and required more of our nutritional intake.
Doesn’t the fact that not only do they never leave survivors but also are intelligent enough to conceal the bodies concern you?
It isn’t about apes but I found this article interesting (and chilling) about having wild cats including tigers. It is a fairly balanced story and doesn’t end in tragedy but it still seems sad and scary. I would guess that it would apply to any large mammal.