Tarazet

April 18, 2005

Where There's Smoke...

Okay, not exactly a "pet story" but from Reuters:


A South African zoo is trying to persuade its star chimpanzee to kick a bad smoking habit.

Charlie, a grown male chimp and the Bloemfontein Zoo, has been picking up cigarettes thrown to him by visitors and smoking them -- a habit he probably picked up by observing humans, zoo officials told the SAPA news agency on Thursday.

"Baby chimps pick up habits by mimicking adults and we think he started mimicking smokers at his enclosure which probably led to smokers throwing him cigarettes," spokesman Daryl Barnes told SAPA.


Hey, give Charlie a break! It's not like there's anything ELSE to do when you spend your life in a cage. I'd probably hand the fellow a bottle of good scotch, too.

Posted by Jeff Soyer at April 18, 2005 07:27 AM
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