It's an old Hollywood cliché: failed and embittered childhood actor grows up and, no longer embraced by the establishment, acts out by driving drunk, robbing a convenience store, viciously masticating an innocent woman's face with exceptionally large and sharp canine teeth, in a fit of fury, till finally brought down by the police in a hail of gunfire...um hold on. As you might of guessed we are not talking about an all too human Dana Plato, Todd Bridges or Corey of your choice, but a fellow member of our family Hominidae, which diverged from our species 6 million years ago. I refer of course to the tragedy of Travis the Celebrity Chimpanzee (former spokes-monkey for Old Navy and Coca-Cola) brought down in a blaze of bullets as he took his last knuckle walking stand. Currently the latest Internet Search Engine Sensation:
What set him off? Was it Lyme Disease, Xanax-laced tea, his victim's new haircut, the shattered dreams of not living up to his fullest potential as a celebrity primate (shilling for conglomerates and corporations instead of breaking human/chimp barriers like Washoe, who mastered American Sign Language in the 1960's, or those great ape cosmonauts from the 1950's--Ham, Enos, and Minnie--who broke the sound-barrier and orbited the planet, paving the deep space road for Alan Shepard). Probably not the latter.
You see Travis was the ripe old age of 15 years old (which is full adult maturity), however,
chimpanzees are known to start becoming dangerous at the age of 5 (when it is probably best to introduce them to a sanctuary since it is quite common for them to start to exhibit aggressive behavior toward their owners at this time). And all it takes is once folks, when your dealing with 200 pounds of taught compact muscle and primal instinct. The average male chimp has four to five times the upper-body strength than his human counterpart and while that might come in handy while trying to open that stubborn pickle jar, it is bound to backfire when he's feeling a mite testy because his grooming is not up to par or the nice old lady refuses to give him a ride in the Vroom Vroom.Yet at the Herold Household, Travis was living the high life being fed steak, lobster and ice-cream while drinking wine from stemmed glasses (I guess those commercial residuals were pretty lucrative--do quadrupeds qualify for SAG?). He was able to dress and wash himself, brush his teeth with a Water Pik and had the use of his own personal toilet. He had a computer where he surfed the Internet (monkey porn sites? National Geographic?), and had access to a remote control TV and was allegedly an expert at channel changing (Fear Factor? When Animals Attack?) Living a better life than most of his homeland's third-world bipedal Homo sapien neighbors. One ponders what those poor fly-covered, swollen-bellied residents, waiting in desperation for the latest vaccine and rice shipments in the Heart of Darkness, might have thought about old Mr. Bushmeat living it up so hoity toity.
Perhaps this unfortunate incident will help to remind us that these animals are not playthings. They are wild creatures who, although we may try to indoctrinate into our culture, do not ultimately possess a human capacity for logic and empathy and live by certain unrelenting instincts which we are powerless to tame. Yes chimps have 96% of our DNA but that 4% makes a vast difference. We are living on The Planet of the Humans after all.
Now if you'll excuse me I have to get back to reading a story about a mild-mannered Muslim TV Executive brutally decapitating his wife in the centuries-old rational tradition of "honor killing." Ah humanity!
.
91 comments:
Having a wild animal as a pet is dangerous enough but then I saw on the news that she fed the chimp lobster tails and filet mignon. (I thought chimps were vegetarians.) Serving the chimp wine is just crazy.
People should not be allowed to have chimpanzee's as pets. When did this become okay? Hopefully this will serve as a painful example and laws will change. A sad and completely avoidable tragedy.
I know.. monkey on human murder is really getting out of hand. It seems like every time I open up a newspaper there is another mugshot of some thug monkey mauler. When will our government finally stand up for families of monkey murder victims and do something to end this recent rein of terror.
It is against the law to keep primates as pets in 20 states.... the other 30 need to adopt the same policy...
Wayne Pacelle, the CEO of the Humane Society of the US, has a column addressing this incident on the HSUS.org site.... It's definitely worth a read. Among his analysis is the following:
"If the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had listed all chimps as "endangered" 20 years ago as it should have, no private citizen in America could legally possess a chimp for use as a pet. But in a cave-in to the biomedical community and other users of chimps, the Fish and Wildlife Service came up with a convoluted "split listing" of the species"designating the wild populations as "endangered," but the captive populations "threatened" under the Endangered Species Act. This latter, less stringent designation, coupled with a set of lax special rules for chimps, allows the buying and selling and keeping of chimps as pets to continue. This bizarre regulatory scheme also allows biomedical labs, roadside zoos, and movie and advertising trainers to exploit chimps."
http://hsus.typepad.com/wayne/2009/02/chimp-attack.html
If this poor woman survives, I hope she gets all the help she needs, including a face transplant if possible, like the women in France who was mauled by her pet dog.
I'm thankful that the days of "simian sidekicks" are coming to an end and people are becoming aware of the cruelty done to those cute little "chimps" to make them smile and imitate our behaviors for the sake of our amusement. People have inaccurate public perceptions of these animals because all they ever see is a chimp in its childhood stage. They don't know what happens to these poor guys after they've passed their cute stage and get shoved into a cage for the next 30 years. Keeping a chimp in a house and watching TV is just another version of the cage. Its an abomination. You can't even put them back into the wild because they've been eating filet mignon with a fork for years. Sick.
Did the chip have a weapon? No he didn't, so where's PETA when you need them.
huh?
It's one thing when something terrible happens to you, but when something terrible happens to someone else because of you, on some levels it's worse (e.g., a friend gets injured in the car you're driving, but you're okay, etc.).
That owner is going to have to live with witnessing what her friend (the chimp) did to her friend, the woman.
Even though the chimp acted out so violently, she's still going to mourn him. And she will also have to deal with the guilt of what happened to her friend.
She's going to need some serious therapy.
Maybe the chimp, after one too many glasses of white wine, sitting on the couch watching fox new, said to himself, what am doing here? what have i done with my life? im a chimp i should be free, in the jungle! oo oo oo ah ah ah .
Rumplestiltskin's rules for leading a long and healthy life:
# 57 - Leave the chimps alone!
I've never seen a chimp that big but some expert on chimps was talking on TV and said they're usually that size when full grown. This one looks more like a gorilla. How in the world can anyone expect to keep something like that as a pet?
The chimps seen on tv, in movies, in ads, and riding on segways are all small children under the age of 8 (which would be the same as an 8-year old child)...Travis was a little overweight but is normal body size for a young adult/late adolescent male of 15 (same as a human 18 year old male)...
Have you seen the vile comic cartoon that has showed up in the NY Post today, a horrible depiction of Travis the Chimpanzee getting shot by two cops and a comment that says "They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus" here's the link ....
http://www.nypost.com/delonas/delonas.htm
My letter of protest sent to the NY Post:
"Thanks for the time-warp cartoon, I had forgotten what life was like in this country in 1955. I needed that unfunny and rude reminder. Of course, considering the intellectual magnitude and target audience of your rag, calling the President a chimpanzee doesn't surprise me at all. But hey, controversy sells, and I'm sure you will make a cool mil once this is all over the blogosphere. Good job? But I have one question: who's the real primate in all this? (Hint: he draws racist cartoons that even a racist would find offensive.) Thanks for the wake-up call about why we're stagnating as a society - I'm much more focused now!"
Fantastic letter!
How truly offensive......they should be held accountable for running this racist cartoon.
The more things change... the more they stay the same.
Please complain to the Post regarding this disgusting cartoon. Here is their contact page:
http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/letters/letters_editor.htm
Will definitely do! Thanks for the contact information.
HOLY CRAP
OMG! That is wrong on so many levels. WOW! WHAT is that supposed to mean?
Um I think it means our president is a chimpanzee. Stay classy, New York Post!!
Uh, if so...The racist implications of that are shocking. And coming from New York City, of all places, huh? I can't begin to rationalize how ANYONE would think publishing that cartoon was a good idea. I think the editor, who allowed this cartoon to make it past his/her desk, needs to be fired. Like yesterday.
For the life of me, I can't see any other possible meaning than the one we're all picking up on.
Makes you wonder if they are trying to make fun of the monkey situation, or if they are calling Obama a monkey. Which is very Republican of them.
That's outrageously offensive!!!
Chimpanzees can be extremely violent animals, particularly as they age. Twenty years ago, I researched communication studies being conducted with chimps in labs, and I visited one of these labs. The researchers took great care to raise the animals humanely and to house them humanely, but I was told that one of the major problems was that the chimps couldn't be used past about the age of four or five because they could become violent and attack the researchers. Younger ones did, as well, but being smaller animals at that point, they usually weren't as dangerous and life threatening to the researchers. However, the day I visited, one of the researchers had a huge bruise on the side of her face, where she had been hit by one of the chimps.
Well, I decided to do some research about what happened to the chimps, when they were too old to be used in the "humane" language studies, and I didn't like what I found out. I came to the conclusion that, yes, being able to communicate with our closest animal in the animal kingdom is cool, very cool, but the consequences to them does not justify the research. These are wild animals, and they need to remain so, regardless of our fascination with our closest relative in the animal kingdom.
The social behavior of chimps is very complex, and they usually see humans as other chimps... This means they will treat humans just like other chimps and always try to dominate them physically... It's usual for chimps to be.a.t on and bite other chimps in order to determine the social pecking order, and so they will do the same thing to humans, especially since they know they are stronger and will certainly win...
Jane Goodall showed that is possible for researchers to be accepted & fairly safe by even wild chimps, but she entered into their group- slowly over time- by acting as an omega, vocalizing as an omega, and grooming other chimps.... most researchers and keepers expect to be alpha, and chimps see no reason to agree to that....
Years ago Jane Goodall documented apes going to "war" against other apes and even 'cannibalizing' them and experts knew chimps had done the same. These aren't the cute pals we see in Disney films. That woman who was attacked had her face torn to pieces.
Michael Jackson got rid of Bubbles for the same reason. They are incredibly strong and aggressive. I saw a nature program once that discussed cases of murder and cannibalism in groups of wild chimpanzees.
I am amazed that people still believe you can keep any wild animal as a "pet"
What a horrible tragedy for the "friend" that was attacked, her family, the community.
Travis is also a victim (and because of this, a very dead one) ... of ignorance and human ego!
No sympathy for the owners of this great ape.
You can teach a chimpanzee tricks, try to humanize it but ultimately it is still a wild animal.
There is no difference between owning a python, a wolf, a chimpanzee, a tiger; any other
non-domesticated animal or reptile. That cute animal will grow up, and will still be an animal with primal instincts.
It is time for legislation prohibiting the personal ownership of animals not meant to be kept as pets. Stop exploiting animals for vanity.
I hope the human victim of this attack can survive it. She may wish she were dead though. Her life is forever changed because of human stupidity.
I agree. People who keep wild animals in their homes, in cages, even in part, are animal abusers.
It sounds as though Travis's owner routinely fed him Xanax. Would that make him aggressive? Isn't it a kind of tranquilizer?
I doubt it was the Xanax. He was being treated for Lyme disease. If you read the symptoms for Lyme disease you see that aggressive behavior, confusion, irrational fear and many psychiatric manifestations appear in late stage cases. The spirochete that causes it is very similar to syphilis and tertiary syphilis caused people to go mad.
The public needs to learn about this epidemic....Lyme disease and its co-infections, which are not all psychiatric, but education and treatment about the illness is being suppressed by the powers that be while millions of people remain undiagnosed, mis-diagnosed and untreated. It's everywhere folks, in every state in the union.
Because Travis lived with this horrific illness for years I have no doubt that it was the Lyme disease that caused him to act out. He should never have been a household pet and especially not with Lyme disease. Remember he did not have language to communicate what he was feeling but he was probably fearful and confused with the terrible symptoms the disease brings on and freaked out.
This is from a 2007 article in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel:
"Congress is now considering the Captive Primate Safety Act to provide the same protection for monkeys, chimpanzees and other primates, and the Humane Society of the United States urges swift passage of the act.
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission is currently taking public comment on the issue of captive exotic wildlife. This is an opportunity to remind the commission that citizens deserve to know what dangerous exotic animals are lurking in their neighborhoods. "
http://cwapc.org/news/NewsDescription.asp?FileName=news_20071016.html
It's too little to late for Travis, but maybe his death can catalyze help for other primates.
Write your congressperson:
http://www.conservativeusa.org/mega-cong.htm
Here's a link to the Florida State site and Fish & Wildlife:
http://www.stateofflorida.com/Portal/DesktopDefault.aspx?tabid=79
http://www.floridaconservation.org/
A full grown chimp is supposed to be several times as strong as a human. They also get quite aggressive when they get older. Not an animal to keep around the house.
He used a computer, drank wine from a stemmed glass, had his own MySpace profile, and used an exfoliating face wash. It doesn't get any more bizarre than that.
"He's been raised almost like a child by this family," Conklin said Monday. "He rides in a car every day, he opens doors, he's a very unique animal in that aspect. We have no indication of what provoked this behavior at all."
You have no indication ? I'll give you one.
IT'S NOT A HUMAN BEING ! NO MATTER WHAT DARWIN TELLS YA !
AND NOT EVERY ANIMAL MAKES A GOOD HOUSE PET !
Please save these poor animals.
I don't want to hear of one more animal killed after attacking a person. Posing with a tiger for a picture, riding an elephant, playing with chimpanzees, entertaining audience with white tigers, feeding bears, handling the rattlesnake, boa constrictor, etc.
All human contact should be banned with these animals. They are wild and they attack. It may take years, but they do what wild animal do, and as previous posts have said, they cannot be made into pets, no matter how ignorant or naive people are. The animal always pays.
"There was no provocation that we know of"
How about keeping a wild animal as a pet for years? Why are people always surprised that this is the outcome? And, as always, it's the animal that pays the ultimate price for the stupidity and cruelty of the human.
Sounds like a classic case of suicide by cop.
Good point, Adlib. Even with the Xanax that chimp was undoubtedly unhappy and suicidally depressed in captivity.
Watch the chimpanzee segment on the nature documentary series "Planet Earth". It clearly shows that chimps in the wild will hunt chimps in rival groups, they tear apart the body of their victim to share with other chimps to eat.
This is so tragic, when will we learn that wild animals are not toys? Nor were they intended to be our little buddies. They belong in their natural habitat.
I notice how the news says the chimp was "shot dead".
No he wasn't -- he was mortally wounded by apparently inept police, who caused the chimp further suffering as he ran away to die in the one place he could identify as his territory, his cage.
Everyone's a victim in this event - the neighbor lady's face and hands were ripped off. She's going to wish she died in that attack.
Conklin told reporters the chimp was acting so agitated earlier that afternoon that Herold gave him the anti-anxiety drug Xanax in some tea. Conklin also suggested the animal may have attacked Nash because she was wearing her hair differently and perhaps wasn't recognized.
Travis looks a bit like Rush, only a little more toned.
The people commenting here all seem to realize that the chimp was put in an unfair no-win situation.... It's the mainstream media which seem to be blaming the chimp for "inexplicably" "attacking" and "lunging" at the humans without "provocation"....
The MSM could learn a lot if they just asked the average commenter on doc's blog.
This is very sad indeed. For everyone involved a true tradgedy. I am suprised that more of the people in that area of Connecticut are not really concerned about the LYME aspect that Travis had to live with daily.
Many people are completely unaware that Lyme Disease can turn to Chronic Lyme and affect multiple systems in the body i/e the heart, brain, eye, etc.... Travis may have been experiencing what is known in the Lyme world as "Lyme Rage". The xanax probably didn't cause this attack. Considering he had Chronic Lyme Disease, than this was probably what happened.
I hope that they do indeed autopsy his brain to see if Travis had Spirochetes in it. If he did, this should be a lesson to the IDSA that short courses of abx don't cure Lyme Disease like they would like us to believe.
You peopl in Connecticut live in a Lyme ifested part of the country(though it is also in all fifty states now). Perhpas you should use this story to your advantage and make sure the IDSA Changes their bogus guidelines on how to diagnose and treat Lyme Disease. They are currently in the process of putting together a supposed unbiased panel(rumor has it that it's anything but). Get involved in Lyme. Check out Lymenet.org or the LDA. This could easily happen to you or a loved one.
Please educate yourself about this disease. It's now in all of our backyards. I know, because I have it.
"... Travis may have been experiencing what is known in the Lyme world as "Lyme Rage". The xanax probably didn't cause this attack. Considering he had Chronic Lyme Disease, than this was probably what happened. ..."
No, Travis was being a chimpanzee. Not to diminish your comments about Lyme disease, I'm really sorry you have it, but that probably had little to do with this tragedy. He belonged in the wild (if he was born there) or in a sanctuary where he could live a close to natural life. He is not a human and should not have been expected to conform to our lifestyle.
Travis probably should have been in the wild especially if he had Lyme disease but his behavior is consistent withadvanced Lyme disease & co-infections. Humans experience severe anxiety, confusion, irrational fear and many other symptoms. Travis, not being human could not communicate what he was feeling but it was mentioned he felt agitated in the morning.
Lyme disease is serious business and at least Travis was able to get a diagnosis. Most humans can't because of the ridiculous guidelines the IDSA have used for years in the face of contrary evidence. People with Lyme disease can't get treatment, insurance won't pay and they get mis -diagnosed most often.
The above poster is absolutely right. This is tragedy for everyone but I truly hope others will educate themselves about how serious this illness is & the political controversy that has been taking place for years keeping people from getting diagnosed quickly and getting treatment, instead of being told they have chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, MS, Alzheimers, mental illness and the list goes on.
Lyme ticks are everywhere in the U.S. and around the world. It is the fastest growing tick borne epidemic that no one know about and imitates many other illnesses.
Like any animal, they don't know about boundaries and limits in human society. There's always a risk. Travis would have been better off at the SaveTheChimps sanctuary in Florida established by Dr. Carole Noon.
Its a sad event for Travis, his owner, and her friend.
I'm sorry for the chimp and the women. No one should own a wild animal unless they know exactly what they're doing.
and if they had known exactly what they were doing they wouldn't have owned a wild animal.
I blame Coca-Cola and Old Navy...at least in part...
Watch nature documentaries on true chimps, not bonobos, and you see this type of behavior frequently. It's not Lyme disease, it's not Xanax, it's being a chimp. There are reasons circuses rarely work with adult chimps, particularly not adult males, and zoo keepers do not generally interact physically with adult chimps - they're just dangerous and hard to predict.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that Xanax has NOT been approved for chimpanzees. Just spitballing, but I think that face mauling is an undesirable side effect.
I agree about domesticating wild animals and then acting surprised when they act like wild animals. It reminds me of the Chris Rock routine, where he was talking about Roy being attacked by a tiger during a Siegfried and Roy show in Vegas. "That Tiger didn't go crazy. That tiger went tiger!"
One of the funniest things I've ever seen on The Daily Show was John Oliver's breakdown of the demographic "Stupid People" when he got to "tiger petters".
The world would be a much, much better place if the humans were in cages and all other animals were roaming free.
Planet of the Apes, baby!
I"m a little confused, was that Travis or John McCain? Hard to tell them apart
hey, you owe Travis an apology
do we as a society still need to be entertained by monkeys in movies, tv, advertising? Is this really necessary? Does anyone still find it funny?
i fall asleep when i take xanax.....never mauled anyone
My wife takes xanex and it helps her a lot. However...when the vet prescribed it for our german shepherd, she became violent and attacked my pug. I was able to save the pug from serious harm, but I ended up getting 5 stitches in my hand. She was switched to prozac and went right back to normal...well...as normal as a german shepherd on prozac gets.
now you have me wondering, what is a german shepherd on prozac like.. and what was wrong with the dog to start with?
She has always been nervous. I adopted her when she was about a year old and she was in horrible shape. No telling what she went through. When we got new wood laminate flooring she became afraid of slipping and she started walking backwards and barking and whining for someone to walk next to her.
She is 11 years old now and has been spoiled rotten.
How is it legal to keep an animal such as a fullgrown chimpanzee as a pet?
It was reported that the woman (owner) had the chimp before there were laws (state laws?) prohibiting keeping certain wild animals as pets; Travis was "grandfathered" in.
Seeing that chimp in a diaper is was really got to me. And, then, reading that he used a Water Pik and used the computer....... says volumes about how messed up we are as humans.
Kanzi, a pygmie chimpanzee or bonobo, has been taught how to "speak" and communicate with the aid of a computer for decades now.... He is able to relay his ideas to humans by pressing symbols on a keyboard that he carries with him...
His researchers visit with him and I've seen where he "helps" in the kitchen... But the main difference is that the researchers know he is a chimp/bonobo and is not a human and is not actually treated like a human.... He still is being socialized like a chimp and respected as a chimp....
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5503685
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Dhc2zePJFE&feature=channel
Jane Goodall writes about taking severe beating multiple times from chimpanzees in the wild.. She would be attacked by the strongest adult male chimp in the group, but because she knew how to react and be submissive, she never was seriously injured..
This chimp was only 15 - a late adolescent... At 16yo, male chimps are considered to be adults...He was always around humans and loved by humans and shouldn't have seen them as a source of food. C'mon...
It's obvious that this young male chimp was going through what is typical of young adult males (whether human or chimp) and was acting out ...and trying to show his dominance... It seems that the "owner" was not prepared for this behavior change that happens to all male chimps of this age, and decided to drug him up instead...
Also, her new hair style was said to have resembled a half-peeled banana.
This would be about the same as yahoos who attempt to raise wolves in their homes. No matter how domesticated the animal might seem, one day something is gonna piss it off.
Don't those Wolf Man TV shows make you insane???
I only watched part of one...he had his poor girlfriend putting her teeth on the wolf's neck to display "dominance..." I had two thoughts:
1) Honey? No one needs a boyfriend that badly.
2) That wolf absolutely knows that she's quicker, stronger and more capable than you are. Right now, she's humoring you...when she doesn't feel like doing that one day, you're going to lose your face.
Unbelievable.
1) Honey? No one needs a boyfriend that badly.
LOL I was thinking the same thing!
Instant classic...LMAO
lol
"domesticated chimpanzee "
--- Oxymoron.
For commenters who may have been wondering why this blog didn't post the Delonas cartoon, I feel Sean Delonas and the New York Post have hidden behind the horrific details of this event to traffic in racist imagery and gratuitous violence in the name of parody.
Because I find the cartoon offensive, it is definitely not my kind of parody.
This, however, is: http://images.huffingtonpost.com/2009-02-19-leecamp_nypost.jpg
Lol!!!!
Where do you find this stuff!!!
Dr. B. RULES!!!!
great find doc
Thank you! The original was disgraceful! I hope they protest the shit out of their offices at the Post.
I couldn't have said it better. Great revision! Much more appropriate than the original.
Now, THAT is funny!
excellent
Perfect!
That should hold those bastards for a while.
Post a Comment