The tragedy occurred in Furuvik Park north of Stockholm.
Photo: REUTERS
The tragedy occurred in Furuvik Park north of Stockholm.
Three chimpanzees left the enclosure at lunchtime and roamed freely in the park. “We have set up surveillance on the compound in case someone else tries to get out,” explains manager Annika Troselius. – In the process of searching the park, we shot two of the three chimpanzees that escaped. Meanwhile, another chimpanzee came out of the enclosure and we also shot him. Then another chimpanzee came out. They also shot her. And that chimpanzee from the first group of fugitives returned to the enclosure… You must understand that chimpanzees are strong animals. When they are outside their enclosure, they pose a great risk, and first of all we must make sure that no one gets hurt. It’s tragic, but unfortunately we saw no other way out than to kill.”
“When the monkeys left the enclosure, people’s lives were in danger, both in the park and outside of it,” explains the director of the zoo, Sandra Wilke. “This is a critical situation, and then there is no other choice but to shoot to kill.” “
There really is a way out. Well known to zoologists. Put fugitives to sleep by shooting them not with bullets, but with vials of sleeping pills. However, the zoo assures in an official message on social networks that the primates had to be shot, since they can only be injected with sleeping pills at point blank range. You also have to wait up to 10 minutes for the anesthesia to take effect. And people are in danger.
However, the zoo is closed during the winter. There were no visitors. So we are talking about park attendants, through whose negligence the chimpanzees freely left the enclosure and calmly wandered. The door was apparently not locked. Ministers are presumably paid for the risk of working with animals.
Not surprisingly, former Furuvik employee Ing-Marie Person, who worked with the dead chimpanzees for three decades, accused the workers who shot Linda, Monda, Torsten and Santino of unprofessionalism. “I think they panicked.”
Mathias Oswat, a leading scientist at the Swedish University of Lund, believes that the dead primates did not pose a threat. Many years ago, they already managed to escape from the compound; besides, there were visitors at the zoo at that time. But they were brought back quietly.
“If I ran into them in the park, then of course I would start to get a little nervous, but I wouldn’t fear for my life. This is a tragedy,” Oswat told the BBC. “I hugged Monda, he kissed Linda, we’re with Santino engaged in tug of war”.
Santino, by the way, was a favorite of the Swedish Crown Princess Victoria for a long time.
He was born in the Munich zoo in 1978, at the age of 5 he got into the Swedish “Furuvik”, at 16 he became the dominant male in a flock of chimpanzees here. And at the age of 31, he’s a star in the world of science. Exactly!
In 2009, Matthias Oswat published a high-profile paper in the scientific journal Current Biology, demonstrating for the first time that animals, like humans, can spontaneously plan future events. He made the scientific discovery of it just after ten years of observing Santino at Furuvik.
Briefly the essence of the discovery In the mornings, when visitors were not yet allowed into the park, Santino collected pebbles, removing chunks of concrete from a concrete moat with water around the compound. And he hid it in a secret place. In addition, he behaved very carefully. As soon as he realized that he was being watched, he stopped picking up stones and pretended to be innocent. When the spectators surrounded the enclosure and looked at Santino and his six friends, the male threw stones prepared in advance. Demonstrating his superiority. This is the first indisputable evidence of the ability of animals to plan actions according not to their current emotional state, but to their future emotional state. Until now, only humans have been considered capable of this. Also, noted Matthias Oswat, Santino picked up stones in a calm state and then threw them at the already excited onlookers. Which can serve as proof of the highly developed consciousness in chimpanzees. They can analyze both the past and the future and model the events that will take place.
About the intelligent male chimpanzee wrote The Times, another world media. There were also articles in the Russian press.
And such a smart girl was not saved from the cowardly Swedish killers. After killing a chimpanzee, zoologists from Lund University decided to end their collaboration with the zoo, which had lasted for many years.
FOX TO WOLVES
A similar tragedy occurred a year ago at another Swedish zoo: Skansen, in the capital Stockholm. There a wolf and three puppies were shot. Moreover, they did not even pose a hypothetical danger to people. They just decided to put arctic foxes in their enclosure. And there was no place for wolves in Skansen.
