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I actually don’t think they made the right call and whomever wrote this article, began it by planting a seed in the readers mind that these chimps are killers a

I actually don’t think they made the right call and whomever wrote this article, began it by planting a seed in the readers mind that these chimps are killers and will maul people on first contact. Of course that will make you think that they did the right thing, but is it actually true that no person interacts with these animals directly across the world? It sounded to me like sheer ignorance and complete lack of experience of the people who worked there. I don’t blame them seeing as how they are located in the middle of nowhere, and having the right people at hand might not be optimal, other than one of the other women who actually had connection with the smart chimp. But that woman was denied entry. And yet she was probably the only person who could have accurately judged the situation for what it was as opposed to “what it could have been”.

chasil 3y ago
The problem is that a single unlocked door led to the unavoidable termination of these animals. There were no attempts to lure them back to the enclosure (to which they would likely have returned due to the low temperature), no other attempts at capture, and no other plan than termination. When escape of the enclosure is a lethal threat, then the enclosure needs greater protections to prevent mandatory termination. There should be at least three levels of containment, using doors with mechanisms that the animals cannot manipulate. Facilities that cannot meet these containment standards should be forced to surrender them to those who can.
- suzzer99 3y ago
  This is what bothers me the most. Design the system so it doesn't rely on keepers remembering to lock doors. For one shift door to open, everything else must be locked down.
  - vanattab 3y ago
    I would think that may violate fire codes no?
  - SV_BubbleTime 3y ago
    Automatic closing and locking doors with keypads. There, problem solved without getting into double door “airlocks”.
- tptacek 3y ago
  Part of the calculus behind shooting them appears to have been the likelihood that they would have suffered a worse death from the cold if they didn't return to the building, and with the light failing, the opportunity to spare them that death was passing.
  - ipaddr 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - tptacek 3y ago
      They're extremely intelligent animals that can, to a first approximation, in a built environment, move along any axis at over 20MPH. You're probably putting more faith in the power of flashlights than the experts did.
  - chasil 3y ago
    I don't think that was a factor at all. They likely would have returned to their enclosures because of the cold. "Many other experts have pointed out that since chimpanzees do not like the cold, they would have been likely to return to the ape house." The risk to human life was the paramount concern. 'Beldt told me he had relived those days perhaps 1,000 times, wondering if they could have done anything different. Every time, he comes to the same conclusion: no. Chimpanzees can turn, and the line between play and violence is thin. Beldt remembers a time when he sat talking to Linda through the bars of the enclosure, and Manda snuck up and jabbed him with a stick she had sharpened with her teeth, just centimetres from his left eye. '“People without any experience of chimpanzees say: if I had done it, I would have got some bananas, and they would have gone back,” Beldt said. “And maybe, but maybe not. Maybe you would have ended up in a body bag, or in 1,000 body bags, because chimps like to tear things from limb to limb.”'
    - scythe 3y ago
      Most animals are more dangerous when they are in what they perceive as "their territory" versus the field. A dog that is very timid on walks might jump on visitors to their house; bees that fiercely defend their hives will rarely sting when foraging; maybe you can think of other examples.
- pvaldes 3y ago
  > The problem is that a single unlocked door led to the termination of the animals. The problem is that this "can't" happen. Zoo animals in harsh climates always sleep indoors in a big inner room heated. This main room can be accessed by a minimum of 2 doors. One (or several) leads to the external part of the exhibition. This play area will typically have a moat, that gradually gets deeper, and a high wall. Chimps are poor swimmers (they sink like a rock on water) and the wall is designed to avoid escapes. If the animals escape to this enclosure they can't proceed further and are not a danger for the public so shooting them wouldn't have any sense. The other door leads typically to a small logistics area, used to store needed stuff (brooms, fresh hay etc) or to interact with the animals safely. This small hall is accessed trough a second locked door. Sometimes you can't open the room door without locking first the pre-cage door. The design encourages having at least one locked door at any time. The building itself will typically have a main door, the third, to allow access from the outside One unlocked door means that the chimps will be contained in the broom's hall. Even with two unlocked doors this could end with the chimps trapped inside as long as you have solid windows (as expected in Sweden). In this case both locks were left opened at the same time, two or maybe three doors unlocked by night, in the middle of a harsh weather (any opened door would lead to a noticeable chill air current inside the building, or even maybe to the electronic heater system triggering automatically an alarm)
stevenwoo 3y ago
The latest series of Planet Earth III shows chimpanzees crossing roads and farms to reach their foraging areas, the farms have just popped up and encroached on the land they normally just roamed. Nobody tries to approach them and the chimpanzees don’t do anything aggressive in the stuff that was aired. The elephants were much more dangerous at least in the segment they showed from Kenya where they kept stats on number of elephants and humans killed per year.
- swalling 3y ago
  That series is really good, but chimps can be incredibly dangerous when in close proximity to humans. In rural Africa, there have been numerous reports of conflicts with wild chimps, including them abducting and killing children. https://archive.ph/2b4MJ https://archive.ph/2b4MJ
  - hulitu 3y ago
    You know what animals "can be incredibly dangerous when in close proximity to humans" ? Dogs. The only difference seems to be that the Dog is man''s best friend.
    - swalling 3y ago
      This is an incredibly weird comparison. Chimps are wild animals. Dogs are fully domesticated animals. Almost half of households in the US have a dog. If packs of wild dogs roamed around occasionally eviscerating children you can bet people would shoot them too.
  - stevenwoo 3y ago
    The decision to kill the orphan baby chimp does not make any sense when they justified the shootings as imminent danger to human life - something five times stronger than a human baby still is not very strong. Maybe it's a mercy since they orphaned it a second time with a rifle but it just sounds like that zoo/park should not be allowed to keep primates.
standardUser 3y ago
The famous story of a woman having her face literally torn off by an otherwise friendly and trained chimpanzee has caused a lot of fear around chimps that didn't exist before. I have no idea how common it is for a chimpanzee to decide to maul a person, but it absolutely does happen. I would rather they kill the chimp than allow even a small risk of it maiming or murdering a person.
- hulitu 3y ago
  There are humans who do this. Do you recommend killing all humans just to be sure that this wouldn't happen ? Where were the tranquilizer shots ?
- tcbawo 3y ago
  I would love to know how quickly and unexpectedly a chimpanzee would turn on a familiar human. Would they seem agitated? Or, would they just suddenly flip out? I imagine an unfamiliar human and unfamiliar environment is another story, though. This story is tragic.
  - michaelmrose 3y ago
    It wasn't mentally healthy and it was on illegally obtained anti anxiety medication. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/chimp-was-drugged-with-xanax https://www.cbsnews.com/news/chimp-was-drugged-with-xanax "It's been well known in primate circles that giving valium to monkeys and apes, particularly if their adrenaline is up, can have a very different effect and not be sedating," "Humans who are aggressive or unstable can get worse under the influence of Xanax, said Dr. Emil Coccaro, chief of psychiatry at the University of Chicago Medical Center. "They just have more frequent and severe outbursts," Coccaro said. It had basically been living like a human being since they took him from his mother at 3 days old in between acting stints and when he got stressed as with many actors he took drugs. I wonder why that didn't go well.
- simonh 3y ago
  They’ve also been known to tear fingers and hands off. In the wild the males will sometimes tear off a rival’s testicles. Chimps are faster, more agile, much stronger than any human, and capable of extreme violence.
dimator 3y ago
there is a lot of armchair quarterbacking in this thread. i don't know why the people who were trained to raise these animals, lived with them, LOVED them for years, and came to the excruciating decision to terminate them are being treated as amateurs. from my reading of this article, the decision, although difficult, would have been made exactly the same way today. the paramount concern in zoos is always human life. they knew these animals best, and they knew what they were capable of. i don't envy the keepers there that day, this will unfortunately be a cloud over their whole career/life.

chasil 3y ago

The problem is that a single unlocked door led to the unavoidable termination of these animals. There were no attempts to lure them back to the enclosure (to which they would likely have returned due to the low temperature), no other attempts at capture, and no other plan than termination. When escape of the enclosure is a lethal threat, then the enclosure needs greater protections to prevent mandatory termination. There should be at least three levels of containment, using doors with mechanisms that the animals cannot manipulate. Facilities that cannot meet these containment standards should be forced to surrender them to those who can.

suzzer99 3y ago
This is what bothers me the most. Design the system so it doesn't rely on keepers remembering to lock doors. For one shift door to open, everything else must be locked down.
- vanattab 3y ago
  I would think that may violate fire codes no?
- SV_BubbleTime 3y ago
  Automatic closing and locking doors with keypads. There, problem solved without getting into double door “airlocks”.
tptacek 3y ago
Part of the calculus behind shooting them appears to have been the likelihood that they would have suffered a worse death from the cold if they didn't return to the building, and with the light failing, the opportunity to spare them that death was passing.
- ipaddr 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - tptacek 3y ago
    They're extremely intelligent animals that can, to a first approximation, in a built environment, move along any axis at over 20MPH. You're probably putting more faith in the power of flashlights than the experts did.
- chasil 3y ago
  I don't think that was a factor at all. They likely would have returned to their enclosures because of the cold. "Many other experts have pointed out that since chimpanzees do not like the cold, they would have been likely to return to the ape house." The risk to human life was the paramount concern. 'Beldt told me he had relived those days perhaps 1,000 times, wondering if they could have done anything different. Every time, he comes to the same conclusion: no. Chimpanzees can turn, and the line between play and violence is thin. Beldt remembers a time when he sat talking to Linda through the bars of the enclosure, and Manda snuck up and jabbed him with a stick she had sharpened with her teeth, just centimetres from his left eye. '“People without any experience of chimpanzees say: if I had done it, I would have got some bananas, and they would have gone back,” Beldt said. “And maybe, but maybe not. Maybe you would have ended up in a body bag, or in 1,000 body bags, because chimps like to tear things from limb to limb.”'
  - scythe 3y ago
    Most animals are more dangerous when they are in what they perceive as "their territory" versus the field. A dog that is very timid on walks might jump on visitors to their house; bees that fiercely defend their hives will rarely sting when foraging; maybe you can think of other examples.
pvaldes 3y ago
> The problem is that a single unlocked door led to the termination of the animals. The problem is that this "can't" happen. Zoo animals in harsh climates always sleep indoors in a big inner room heated. This main room can be accessed by a minimum of 2 doors. One (or several) leads to the external part of the exhibition. This play area will typically have a moat, that gradually gets deeper, and a high wall. Chimps are poor swimmers (they sink like a rock on water) and the wall is designed to avoid escapes. If the animals escape to this enclosure they can't proceed further and are not a danger for the public so shooting them wouldn't have any sense. The other door leads typically to a small logistics area, used to store needed stuff (brooms, fresh hay etc) or to interact with the animals safely. This small hall is accessed trough a second locked door. Sometimes you can't open the room door without locking first the pre-cage door. The design encourages having at least one locked door at any time. The building itself will typically have a main door, the third, to allow access from the outside One unlocked door means that the chimps will be contained in the broom's hall. Even with two unlocked doors this could end with the chimps trapped inside as long as you have solid windows (as expected in Sweden). In this case both locks were left opened at the same time, two or maybe three doors unlocked by night, in the middle of a harsh weather (any opened door would lead to a noticeable chill air current inside the building, or even maybe to the electronic heater system triggering automatically an alarm)

stevenwoo 3y ago

The latest series of Planet Earth III shows chimpanzees crossing roads and farms to reach their foraging areas, the farms have just popped up and encroached on the land they normally just roamed. Nobody tries to approach them and the chimpanzees don’t do anything aggressive in the stuff that was aired. The elephants were much more dangerous at least in the segment they showed from Kenya where they kept stats on number of elephants and humans killed per year.

swalling 3y ago
That series is really good, but chimps can be incredibly dangerous when in close proximity to humans. In rural Africa, there have been numerous reports of conflicts with wild chimps, including them abducting and killing children. https://archive.ph/2b4MJ https://archive.ph/2b4MJ
- hulitu 3y ago
  You know what animals "can be incredibly dangerous when in close proximity to humans" ? Dogs. The only difference seems to be that the Dog is man''s best friend.
  - swalling 3y ago
    This is an incredibly weird comparison. Chimps are wild animals. Dogs are fully domesticated animals. Almost half of households in the US have a dog. If packs of wild dogs roamed around occasionally eviscerating children you can bet people would shoot them too.
- stevenwoo 3y ago
  The decision to kill the orphan baby chimp does not make any sense when they justified the shootings as imminent danger to human life - something five times stronger than a human baby still is not very strong. Maybe it's a mercy since they orphaned it a second time with a rifle but it just sounds like that zoo/park should not be allowed to keep primates.

standardUser 3y ago

The famous story of a woman having her face literally torn off by an otherwise friendly and trained chimpanzee has caused a lot of fear around chimps that didn't exist before. I have no idea how common it is for a chimpanzee to decide to maul a person, but it absolutely does happen. I would rather they kill the chimp than allow even a small risk of it maiming or murdering a person.

hulitu 3y ago
There are humans who do this. Do you recommend killing all humans just to be sure that this wouldn't happen ? Where were the tranquilizer shots ?
tcbawo 3y ago
I would love to know how quickly and unexpectedly a chimpanzee would turn on a familiar human. Would they seem agitated? Or, would they just suddenly flip out? I imagine an unfamiliar human and unfamiliar environment is another story, though. This story is tragic.
- michaelmrose 3y ago
  It wasn't mentally healthy and it was on illegally obtained anti anxiety medication. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/chimp-was-drugged-with-xanax https://www.cbsnews.com/news/chimp-was-drugged-with-xanax "It's been well known in primate circles that giving valium to monkeys and apes, particularly if their adrenaline is up, can have a very different effect and not be sedating," "Humans who are aggressive or unstable can get worse under the influence of Xanax, said Dr. Emil Coccaro, chief of psychiatry at the University of Chicago Medical Center. "They just have more frequent and severe outbursts," Coccaro said. It had basically been living like a human being since they took him from his mother at 3 days old in between acting stints and when he got stressed as with many actors he took drugs. I wonder why that didn't go well.
simonh 3y ago
They’ve also been known to tear fingers and hands off. In the wild the males will sometimes tear off a rival’s testicles. Chimps are faster, more agile, much stronger than any human, and capable of extreme violence.

dimator 3y ago

there is a lot of armchair quarterbacking in this thread. i don't know why the people who were trained to raise these animals, lived with them, LOVED them for years, and came to the excruciating decision to terminate them are being treated as amateurs. from my reading of this article, the decision, although difficult, would have been made exactly the same way today. the paramount concern in zoos is always human life. they knew these animals best, and they knew what they were capable of. i don't envy the keepers there that day, this will unfortunately be a cloud over their whole career/life.