Chimpanzees are supposed to be the "good" apes, cute and funny, the hairy little people depicted in thousands of films and TV shows. But recent news out of western Africa shows they can be brutally fierce.
A chimp attacked and killed a Sierra Leone man who was driving Americans to a wildlife refuge last month. Another man lost part of his hand in the attack.
Some news reports said a group of up to 20 chimps that had broken out of their enclosures gang-attacked the men, while other stories have pinned responsibility on one animal, possibly a chimp named Bruno, the undisputed alpha male of the Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary. The powerful ape reportedly punched out a window of the taxicab the men were in and assaulted the driver, Issu Kanu, before attacking the passengers.
"This thing was on a rampage, and it acted like it wanted to kill every one of us," Gary Brown, one of the Americans in the cab, told an Austin, Texas, TV station recently. "And it had hatred in its eyes."
Hardly the behavior we would expect from Tarzan's little pal Cheetah, or Zira and Cornelius, the benevolent chimp scientists from Planet of the Apes. But such attacks are not unprecedented.
BBC Wildlife magazine reported in 2004 that chimp attacks on people in Uganda had increased, with 15 children either mauled or killed in the past seven years. Since the 1960s, only six such attacks had been recorded in that region of Africa, according to the report.
Last year, a man narrowly escaped death when two male chimps attacked him at a California sanctuary. The victim, St. James Davis, and his wife had gone to visit Moe, the chimp they had taught to wear clothes, take showers, use the toilet and watch television, the Los Angeles Times reported. Moe had been banished to the sanctuary after he bit a woman.
The Davises had arrived with a cake to celebrate Moe's birthday when two other male chimps who had escaped from their cages attacked. St. James Davis lost all the fingers from both hands, an eye and parts of his nose, cheeks, lips and buttocks. His genitals also were mutilated, according to news reports. A relative of the sanctuary owners fatally shot the animals before they could kill Davis.
"I had no idea a chimpanzee was capable of doing that to a human," Kern County Fire Capt. Curt Merrell said at the time.
They certainly have the strength. An adult male chimpanzee may be only 4 feet tall and weigh 110 pounds, but he is at least five times as strong as a man.
