Monkeys: February 2009 Archives

Sure they're cute in their little monkey suspenders, but chimps are amazingly strong.

And as sadly demonstrated a few weeks ago whe a chimp nearly mauled a woman to death, they can be nasty.

But exactly how strong are they? Figures range from five to eight times stronger than human, a figure which doesn't really make sense when held up to scrutiny. I mean, yeah, sure, they're that much stronger than me, but I sit at a desk all day long and the only thing I ever lift are potato chips.

An interesting article in Slate magazine examines the issue. Yes, they're stronger than the strongest human, but not THAT strong.

A chimp on four legs can easily outrun a world-class human sprinter. But it sounds extreme to suggest that humans are only an eighth as strong as chimpanzees. Consider that a large human can bench-press 250 pounds. If the "five to eight times" figure were true, that would make a large chimpanzee capable of bench-pressing 1 ton. It's just the sort of factoid the zoo staff might tell you to keep you from knocking on the glass.

Photo from Slate.com 

Sure, we all think it'd be cool to have a pet monkey, but it's one of those ideas that's probably left in the realm of fantasy.

It's a hard lesson to learn, but one that a lady in Connecticut learned this week when her pet chimp nearly killed her.

The animal weighed 200 pounds, so maybe the trick is to get smaller monkeys.

The story ends badly for the chimp.

NEW YORK, Feb 17 (Reuters) - Police shot and killed a 200-pound (90-kg) chimpanzee that had once starred in television commercials after the ape nearly killed its owner's friend and attacked a police cruiser.

The victim, Charla Nash, 55, was in very critical condition from the biting and mauling attack on Monday, said Captain Richard Conklin, a spokesman for police in Stamford, Connecticut, a New York City suburb. Her injuries were life threatening, he said on Tuesday.

Owner Sandra Herold, 70, tried to stop her rampaging pet, Travis, by stabbing him with a butcher knife and hitting him with a shovel but the chimpanzee fended off the attack and then stormed a police car that had responded to the scene, Conklin said.