09
Mar 09I’ll bet he didn’t plan for that.
In today’s WaPost, there’s an interesting little article about Santino, “an adult male chimpanzee in a Swedish zoo [who] often collects stones before opening time so he can have them ready later on when visitors arrive… On some days, he’s barraged visitors with up to 20 projectiles thrown in rapid succession, always thrown underhand. Several times he has hit spectators standing about 30 feet across a water-filled moat.”
First off, that is pretty cool. I don’t really like zoos, and I have to think I’d be a little grumpy if I were stuck in one. Anyway, the article talks about planning behavior in chimps, such as Santino’s little stockpiles or a female chimp who “would bring an armful of straw from her enclosure when she went outside in the morning in order to have something to sit on” when it was cold out. Then it ends with these last two tragic grafs:
Santino’s rock-throwing may not be in evidence when spring comes to Sweden this year and he emerges to see visitors again across the water.
In order to decrease his agitation, which was fueled in part by high testosterone levels characteristic of dominant males, the animal was castrated last fall.
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