Posts tagged chimpanzees
One of our heroes of the week has to be Santino, the chimp.
We love this pic of him posturing in front of visitors.
And we love this story about his elaborate schemes.
more images of Santino here.
“A lot of great apes, especially dominant males, throw stuff at people at zoos,” he said. “And I would think that this is something that comes naturally to them when performing their dominance displays. These are often aimed at making other apes move out of the way and, in effect, accept him as the boss.”
Santino — the boss!
Zoo Chimp Makes Elaborate Plots to Attack Humans
“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.
Photos: Top: Here, Santino postures, looking tough, in front of zoo visitors.
Bottom: Santino may not be fond of human visitors, but he loves playing and spending time with Selma, a young chimp also at Furuvik Zoo.
more photos of Santino here
