The long read: When the great apes at Furuvik Zoo broke free from their enclosure last winter, the keepers faced a terrible choice. This is the story of the most dramatic 72 hours of their lives
The average chimpanzee is thought to be 50% stronger than a human of comparable body mass, and there are many accounts of supposedly domesticated pet chimps suddenly turning on people.
In one particularly horrifying incident in 2009, a chimpanzee called Travis who had been raised by humans from birth mauled his owner’s friend, biting and tearing her face, ripping out her eyes, removing one of her hands and most of the other.
Furuvik Zoo is only open to the public during the summer, but on that December morning, there were still 35 people on site: administrative staff, zookeepers attending to the animals and contractors renovating the amusement park, known as the Tivoli.
“There are rules,” she told me, “if there has to be a euthanisation –” then she corrected herself, “I don’t want to use that word in this situation, because it was killing.” (The Swedish Agricultural Agency granted Furuvik retrospective permission to kill the chimpanzees, accepting the park’s claim that there was a threat to human safety.)
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.
Two separate legal investigations into the park over their conduct are ongoing, one for the alleged crime of neglecting human safety in allowing the chimpanzees to escape, and another for violation of Sweden’s Animal Welfare Act in killing the four apes.
The original article contains 7,467 words, the summary contains 247 words. Saved 97%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Man I hate when people reference Travis without also mentioning they were fucking around and thought it was funny to give the chimp xanax and alcohol, yeah chimps are aggressive animals but there’s like 20 other story’s you could tell where it was actually just a monkey going apeshit out of nowhere
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The average chimpanzee is thought to be 50% stronger than a human of comparable body mass, and there are many accounts of supposedly domesticated pet chimps suddenly turning on people.
In one particularly horrifying incident in 2009, a chimpanzee called Travis who had been raised by humans from birth mauled his owner’s friend, biting and tearing her face, ripping out her eyes, removing one of her hands and most of the other.
Furuvik Zoo is only open to the public during the summer, but on that December morning, there were still 35 people on site: administrative staff, zookeepers attending to the animals and contractors renovating the amusement park, known as the Tivoli.
“There are rules,” she told me, “if there has to be a euthanisation –” then she corrected herself, “I don’t want to use that word in this situation, because it was killing.” (The Swedish Agricultural Agency granted Furuvik retrospective permission to kill the chimpanzees, accepting the park’s claim that there was a threat to human safety.)
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.
Two separate legal investigations into the park over their conduct are ongoing, one for the alleged crime of neglecting human safety in allowing the chimpanzees to escape, and another for violation of Sweden’s Animal Welfare Act in killing the four apes.
The original article contains 7,467 words, the summary contains 247 words. Saved 97%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Good bot
Man I hate when people reference Travis without also mentioning they were fucking around and thought it was funny to give the chimp xanax and alcohol, yeah chimps are aggressive animals but there’s like 20 other story’s you could tell where it was actually just a monkey going apeshit out of nowhere