![]() Most of the time they attack through cage bars. He is affiliated with the Living Links Center at Emory University in Atlanta where he is a professor of psychology, and is also author of The New York Times notable book of the year, Our Inner Ape.Īre captive chimpanzee attacks on humans common? To find out more about chimpanzee attacks, we spoke with Frans de Waal, lead biologist from the Yerkes National Primate Research Center. Travis’ owner claims to have given him a Xanax-laced tea the day of the attack. Some have suggested that the attack was spurred by Xanax, a prescription drug used to treat anxiety disorders in humans, with side effects that can-but rarely-include depression, confusion and problem behavior. So why would an allegedly acclimated chimpanzee turn on a human-especially one whom he had known? Travis was reportedly suffering from Lyme disease, caused by a tick-borne bacterium and known to cause fatigue, joint problems and mental difficulties-including trouble focusing and poor memory in humans. But periodic violent attacks on humans, including one in Havilah, Calif., in 2005 in which a man was maimed by two chimps at an animal sanctuary, are reminders that the animals have at least one big difference: brute strength. ![]() Reports, however, are starting to surface that Travis might have bitten another woman in 1996 and that Herold had been warned by animal control that her pet could be dangerous.Ĭhimpanzees, with a genetic profile that's 98 percent like ours, can seem like cute, hairy iterations of people. He appeared in television commercials and had a sapiens-level CV that included using a computer, bathing and sipping wine from a stemmed glass, according to The New York Times. The chimp, Travis, who was shot and killed by police officers at the scene, was apparently a friendly fixture around the neighborhood. The victim remains in critical condition. The owner, Sandra Herold, who tried to stop the attack, was also injured and briefly hospitalized. What's more, these asymmetries mirror those found in motor areas of humans, which suggests a common evolutionary origin, Hopkins says.Earlier this week, a 14-year-old, 200-pound (90-kilogram) pet chimpanzee in Stamford, Conn., left a woman in critical condition after attacking her-mutilating her face and hands. 6) that corresponded with their handedness. These chimps had somewhat lateralized brains ( Behavioral Neuroscience, Vol. When Hopkins looked at MRI scans of these chimps' brains, he found that there were asymmetries between the hemispheres, especially in two motor cortex areas, the precentral gyrus and the inferior frontal gyrus. ![]() It turned out that chimps were extremely right-handed for this behavior ( Journal of Comparative Psychology, Vol. So he and his colleagues introduced themselves to a variety of chimpanzees and recorded which hand each chimp used to throw feces at them. "Chimps usually throw at new people-they'll often throw their at them," Hopkins explains. In 2004, he designed an experiment to determine which hand chimps throw with. In 1998, Hopkins and his colleagues established that when making one-handed gestures, like pointing to something, chimps almost exclusively use their right hands. A series of experiments in the '90s by Hopkins and others showed that movements requiring skilled coordination-the original research had chimps fishing peanut butter out of the end of a plastic pipe-were often done using the right hand, while the chimps were less preferential for unskilled movements such as simple reaching. But in the last decade, researchers have shown that other animals' brain hemispheres may be specialized for particular tasks.īill Hopkins, PhD, an Agnes Scott College primate researcher and biopsychologist, was one of the first to establish that, like humans, chimps tend to be right-handed, though not quite as ubiquitously as humans-about 70 percent. Historically, humans were the only animals thought to have handedness.
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