He has long had issues integrating into the zoo’s chimpanzee troupe, reported De Gelderlander, noting that Chita was injured in a 2008 brawl with several other chimps. “An animal that is too focused on humans is less respected by its peers,” Lafaut said.Īccording to a Dutch daily newspaper De Gelderlander, Chita’s fondness for humans could be traced to the fact that he was once kept as a pet but was given to the zoo 30 years ago when his owners found his behavior unmanageable. Lafaut added that as a result of Chita’s interactions with Timmermans and other human visitors, he spent all his time outside the zoo’s opening hours sitting in isolation, completely shunned by the rest of the primate troupe. “When Chita is constantly surrounded by visitors, the other animals ignore him and don’t consider him part of the group,” Lafaut told ATV. “Other dozens of visitors are allowed to make contact with Chita, but why not me?”īut Antwerp Zoo spokeswoman Sarah Lafaut, who manages the zoo’s mammal collection, had a good reason for the ban. Why do they want to take this away from me?” Timmermans told ATV tearfully. She said the chimp is “all” she has in her life. Gnala solicited tickling like other chimps: presenting her back to the tickler, scrunching her shoulders up to her ears, and raising her hands as if to shield her neck from the almost unbearable pleasure of it all. Timmermans says it isn’t fair that she has been banned from seeing Chita, while scores of other people are allowed to. By her second day, she enthusiastically sought human touch. She shared clips of herself pressed up against the glass of the monkey enclosure, “kissing” Chita through the glass and waving to him. Timmermans described her interactions with Chita as a “real relationship” and said her bond with the chimpanzee was like “having an affair.” ![]() “I love that animal, and he loves me,” Timmermans said to Belgian news channel ATV, adding she had been visiting Chita every week for four years. She was banned from seeing her favorite chimpanzee because their relationship is interfering with the chimp’s ability to bond with his fellow primates.Īdie Timmermans, a regular at the zoo’s primate enclosure, was told this week by the Antwerp Zoo that she would be prohibited from seeing Chita, a 38-year-old chimpanzee she calls the apple of her eye. A woman known as Adie Timmermans has been banned from entering a zoo in Antwerp, Belgium.
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