Poor Monkey

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090218/ap_on_re_us/chimpanzee_attack_19

I've been watching the coverage of the chimpanzee attack. Why is that human stupidity regarding primates always end up with the monkey getting shot? People should just not own primates as pets. It's a mind bogglingly bad idea. Yes, chimps are adorable. They're like hairy little people. Hairy, little, potentially volatile people with highly efficient musculature that could throw you across the room if they get pissed. And most people don't have the kind of education and training it would take to begin to understand and properly care for as complicated a creature as a primate. Even people who are trained to care for them, in the best of situations, have to have a healthy respect for the fact that a chimp can go berserk.

One thing nobody seems to mention is that this chimp appears to have had a serious weight problem. I don't think you have to be politically correct regarding big boned simians. Brudda man was carrying some pounds. And if chimpanzees are like humans, and apparently in a lot of ways they are, carrying extra weight can screw with your hormones in a big way. And it's not like if they had put him on a diet, the chimp could have called Dominoe's himself. You'd have to chalk it up to owners who, even though they appeared to love him, were either not knowledgable enough or not emotionally equipped to be strict with him. One more case of humans being kind to be cruel when it comes to the animal kingdom.

We need to save these animals' habitats, make the world safe for them, then just let them go be themselves out in the wild. And in a perfect world, anybody who was truly interested would have the opportunity to go visit them in their own world. Because it's sure as hell not safe for them in ours.