Chimpanzees Aren't Pets, People!

Sure, they look cute. You hear that humans and chimpanzees share 98 percent of their genetic material and think, "wow, that would be a unique and awesome pet, right?"

Wrong, wrong, wrong. As proved in a number of recent news stories - such as this one about a chimpanzee hurling rocks at zoo visitors because it was tired of being stared at, this one about a caged chimp escaping and attacking a friend of the owner's, and this one about an abused chimp killing its owner with a well-aimed coconut - chimps don't make good pets.

This is due in very large part to the fact that chimps are mean as hell, especially male chimps. In the wild, they fight all the damn time. When groups meet, they attack and sometimes kill each other, and groups of male chimps will go on hunts for smaller monkeys. Now, granted, all the animals in the incidents listed above were somehow provoked, but chimpanzees are naturally testy. In The Last Great Ape, a Nova episode about bonobos - a far rarer and more peaceful species of chimp, pan paniscus - one researcher talks about the difference between the species in human terms, and chimpanzees are described represent humanity's violent side. (Bonobos, incidentally, are very rare and endangered and should not be kept as pets. I'm also fairly sure it's illegal to do so.)

This is not to say that chimpanzees are any more violent than any other animal that might be kept as a pet. But they are more intelligent, stronger, and more capable of planning ahead by far than most of those other species. Leaving aside the fact that nobody should be keeping these already endangered animals as pets to begin with, very few people are equipped to give them the space and facilities to keep them healthy and happy. It's the cardinal rule of pet ownership - don't keep an animal you aren't prepared to take good care of.

Travis, the chimp that attacked a woman's face, didn't deserve to be shot. He was one victim among many of a society that fails to recognize that great apes, while like us in many ways, are still wild animals and are not appropriate pets.