Chimp in a Class of his Own

Chimpanzees are clever. We know this because scientists conduct experiments on them (no, not
that kind). Usually, the experiments involve placing a piece of something tasty just out of reach
of the chimpanzee, standing back, and watching how long the chimp takes to figure out how to
get the tasty morsel. This must be irritating for the chimp, especially if he’s hungry. “Look,
you’ve got me trapped in this cage. Just give me something to eat, nothing fancy, leaves will do,
and I’ll draw the New York skyline in immense detail for you. Or, if that’s not good enough,
give me a book of any branch of mathematics that employs symbolic computations and I’ll dash
off the answers before lunch. Oh, by the way, what are we having for lunch?”

One such experiment involved the scientists imaginatively hanging a bunch of bananas from the
ceiling of a room. Strewn around the room were several wooden boxes of various sizes. The
scientists then introduced a chimpanzee to the room (“Ah, Bonzo, meet the room.”) and watched
through a concealed window to see how long it took the chimp to build a staircase to reach the
bananas.

The chimp sized up the problem, grabbed the window pole and hooked the bananas down.

(I understand, but cannot confirm, that if you use the words ‘anthropopiseus troglodytes and
musaceae’ in a proposal on a proper application form you can get a sizable government grant.)

Yep, don’t mess with chimps. I had wandered around Rio Zoo and came upon the chimpanzee
compound. There were three high, brick walls around the compound and a chimp could be seen
at the back sitting in the shade. Then a group of schoolchildren arrived.

Separating us and the chimp was a high, diamond mesh fence and beyond that a moat about
fifteen feet wide.

As if in unison, the schoolchildren began making monkey noises and scratching their armpits.
The chimp looked at the children wearily and began to walk slowly towards them, dragging his
knuckles on the ground like they do. This merely encouraged the children to increase the noise
and the scratching

What the children didn’t see was that the chimp had scooped up handfuls of moist mud. When he
got as near as he could, on the edge of the moat, he stood up, screeched very loudly, grinned, and
hurled the mud at the schoolchildren. When the mud hit the fencing it broke into a million little
pellets and showered the children as they ran off squealing.

Chimpanzee 1 Schoolchildren 0