Animal Attack: Travis, the murdered chimp

[AnimalHouse36]

I'm sure we've all heard of the events in the past few days involving the murdering of Travis the chimp. In my state CT.
If you haven't heard..here's what I've gathered. A lady kept a 200 lb. chimpanzee as a pet. That is until the poor think decided to turn on his owners when he became of the age that most male chimps become "violent".

He attacked his owner. The owner escaped but her friend did not. The friend in the end had his/her face ripped of. The owner began stabbing her "belvoed PET" in the back with a knife until the poor thing escaped only to corner a cop into a car. The cop fired a few rounds into his back where once again the chimp escaped only to die back in his home.

On the many news stories I've watched there has not been one mention about how this is a wild animal. Only how he was trained and was in commercials(need I say more) and he was the sweetest thing.

My state turned a blind eye on the animal who isn't allowed to be kept in a home in the first place. And because of this, people may die.

The woman said this animal is her "baby". The woman is on teve and she's stating how she knew she had to get a knife. "He didn't understand what was going on." And in the 911 call "The chimp killed my friend" And now they're showing pictures of the poor chimp in a diaper.

She said that she doesn't know why he turned. Maybe he didn't recognize her in her new hairstyle. This is just dispicible. How could anyone take a poor thing out of the wild to be a pet.

She gave the poor hink Xanax because he wouldn't sleep.

The state is just blaming on each other with excuses. People just don't get how these animals are not pets.

Thankfully someobdy is trying to get a ban on exotic animals. Thank god.

SOrry for this rant. I needed to share with people who understand me. I know it's a bit of a mess...but I just had to share this. I'm distraut and upset and i don't know how to react to such an act of selflishness.

[pennykit&amanda]

Poor Travis! That baffles me how they say they don't know what happened... I hope they do ban them as pets. I don't mean to sound rude or anything, but they had that attack coming to them.

What a horrible way to die too! At least he's in a better place now.

[Paula]

The animal had to be destroyed from a public safety standpoint. As heinous as it is that it came to this end for Travis, the value of an animal’s life is never going to equal that of human safety.

The real tragedy is that this country doesn’t have tighter regulations or (preferably) an outright ban on private ownership of wild animals. That also means that there needs to be a clearer and more distinct definition emerging of what a “wild animal” is. I think it should include not only chimps and tigers and the like, but other animals considered “exotics,” like small marsupials and other animals commonly available in the exotic pet trade. In the end, keeping these animals hurts everyone.

The question for people that keep tigers and lions and bears and chimps is WHEN the animal is going to attack, not if. And people that keep these animals only to have them attack and maul or kill others should be held criminally responsible and punished accordingly.

[AnimalHouse36]

Originally Posted by paula.m.moore

The animal had to be destroyed from a public safety standpoint. As heinous as it is that it came to this end for Travis, the value of an animal’s life is never going to equal that of human safety

I understand that the he had to be destroyed, but he never should have had to be in that position in the first place. He never should have had to be ripped away from his mother, and trained to be in a commericial. He should have been in the wild.

I'm sure you know all this though.

[starshine123102]

Originally Posted by AnimalHouse36

I understand that the he had to be destroyed, but he never should have had to be in that position in the first place. He never should have had to be ripped away from his mother, and trained to be in a commericial. He should have been in the wild.

I'm sure you know all this though.

I doubt he was a wild chimp, in the sense that he came directly from Africa. More than likely, he was born and raised in captivity. Not that it changes the principals of the situation. It's still incredibly wrong to keep an animal that is in no way domesticated as a pet.

Like Paula said, it's not a matter of if the animal will attack, but of when it will. There is absolutely no reason why this animal should be a pet.

[sophistacavy]

That's a disgusting, abhorrent story! Oh my gosh.
"Trained to be in commercials" makes me want to barf. Thats just like having a circus animal, there are no excuses to have custom-made animals suffer for the sake of marketing. They could use clips of video recordings of them in their natural habitat, and they could easily crop out certain movements and sounds and stuff.

That lady deserves to go to jail. She really, truly does. What a disgusting human being. She's not unlike many other people, but still.....nauseating.

This exotic pet trade has got to stop. We need a law as strict as what happens to you if you're accused of murder, . And we need to ban cross-breeding them to domestic animals in order to create hybrids. I don't like that idea either, it's just another example of humans crafting poor innocent animals to meet their needs and wants. Sick!

Oh well, perhaps something beneficial will come of this....

[ZiggyMama]

I just read about it in the paper and it saddened me. The keeping of exotic pets should be for professional rescues specializing in their care. I am always upset when I see something like this happen. To imagine her stabbing him really is disturbing. I always have to turn the channel if I see footage of an elephant gone wild at a circus. They aren't meant to be in a tent! Exotic pets are not "pets", they are exotic animals who need freedom. I agree that it has to stop.

[LadyMorrgian]

I love pets, I really do, but even though some animals are amazingly cute, they are just not meant to be pets. You would think as the "smartest" living creatures on the planet we would realize that.

[BrainDeadBuster]

Originally Posted by pennykit&amanda

Poor Travis! That baffles me how they say they don't know what happened... I hope they do ban them as pets. I don't mean to sound rude or anything, but they had that attack coming to them.

What a horrible way to die too! At least he's in a better place now.

And I don't mean to be rude, but that's sick to say that this woman's friend had it coming to her. That's just messed up. She didn't own the chimp, she didn't deserve that to happen. Do you understand that she was innocent, and had her face ripped off?

[pennykit&amanda]

And I don't mean to be rude, but that's sick to say that this woman's friend had it coming to her. That's just messed up. She didn't own the chimp, she didn't deserve that to happen. Do you understand that she was innocent, and had her face ripped off?

I'm sorry you read my post wrong. I meant that it should have been expected. It's a wild animal, and they say they don't know why he attacked?!?! And I never said she deserved it!

[sophistacavy]

He should've ripped his owner's face off, taken it to PETA headquarters, turned it in, been awarded an animal Purple Heart, and then gone back to his natural habitat.

Travis's owner's friend, the woman who was attacked, did not deserve this. It is sick and unfair that she had to suffer and almost die because of how much of an ignoramous that her friend is.

[BrainDeadBuster]

No, I read your post right. You said "They had it coming to them".

[pennykit&amanda]

Originally Posted by BrainDeadBuster

No, I read your post right. You said "They had it coming to them".

I already explained it, I'm not gonna do it again.

[sophistacavy]

BrainDeadBuster: She meant that they should've expected that to happen, instead of expecting him to act like a dog or any other domesticated animal companion that is supposed to be a pet and not a wild animal. In other words: it would have happened sooner or later. It was inevitable.

[pigsmakemesmile]

When I listened to the story on the news it brought tears to my eyes and so broke my heart for both the chimp and for the women who was mauled. I absolutely do not blame the chimp for his actions. He's an animal and lacks the ability to "reason" in the capacity that humans do. He was exploited.
No one will ever know the reason why this happened. If anything can come from it is the government creating a federal law that bans these and other exotics from being kept as pets.
If there's one thing that I hate in humans, it's their greedy nature and need to exploit lfor the sake of the "allmighty buck" and with this I'm reffering to the exploitation of animals and those who cannot defend themselves.
Anytime I see an animal being exploited makes me want to peuk. This includes circus animals...I've banned my family from going to circuses where animals are used in their acts. I get so angry that my blood pressure sky rockets when I walk in a petstore and see small animals, birds, piggies, hamsters and so on...crammed in small dirty cages..Oh God it P---es me off to no end then on top of it all, you hear about cases like Travis. That poor animal, the way he died...God there's no forgiving here.
I'm so glad his suffering has ended. He didn't deserve to die this way. They're called wild animals for a reason. Our society lacks plain common sense. Why does it take such a tragedy to get a change to come about???

[guineapigluver1]

I heard about this today. I can't even describe how I feel. It makes me so sad.

[rabbitsncavyluv]

I'm sorry that the chimp had to be put in that position to be killed.

I also read that there was a prior issue with him too? A different attack or injury some time before? But no one did anything.

[diane]

I heard about the prior incidents on the Today show yesterday. One time he jomped out of the car in the middle of traffic and held it up. He could of got hit then. And another time I guess he got in someones car she reached to grab something and he grabbed her hand and tried to pull her in then bite her hand. Thankfully she didn't get hurt. I think the warning signs were there.

[Paula]

Originally Posted by BrainDeadBuster

No, I read your post right. You said "They had it coming to them".

I think the point she was trying to make is that you don’t get to have an animal like this in an environment completely foreign to him/her and then be shocked when it attacks and seriously injures or kills people. The person that was mauled surely didn’t deserve the attack she suffered, but I highly doubt that she didn’t know this friend of hers had this animal, and I think she was at the owner’s home at her own risk.

This situation represents a number of failures. First, the woman shouldn't have been allowed to get this animal in the first place, and once she had it, the animal should have been seized and relocated to a sanctuary or other facility equipped to deal with his care and the owner should have been arrested or made to serve jail time for harboring an illegal animal. Beyond that, when the animal was clearly identified as dangerous, he most certainly should have been seized and relocated. That the owner was feeding the poor thing Xanax only furthers my belief that she should be held criminally responsible for the attack of her friend, in addition to being charged with numerous other crimes related to harboring this animal in the first place. In addition, those that breed and continue to sell these animals in the pet trade should be prosecuted as well.

Chimps and other primates, as well as the other wild animals that are all too easy to buy in this country operate on a far more basic, primal level of instincts than anything we can understand. Zoologists and animal behavior experts struggle to understand the complexities of their behavior in their natural habitats. So, when a person takes an animal like this and makes it a pet, holding it in a private home, in an environment that is entirely foreign to it and unlike everything natural to it, usually with a limited understanding of their actual needs, much less a way to actually meet those needs, the animal suffers, and many times the “pet” attacks and injures people. What might trigger such an attack can’t be fully known or understood, and therefore can’t be predicted, much less prevented.

So, in my opinion, in this case and others like it, the only truly innocent victims, are the animals. Sadly, this woman’s desire to own an “exotic” animal cost Travis his life. It’s not the first time, and tragically, it’s not likely to be the last either.

Yes, we might be the “smartest” creatures on the planet, but we are also the most arrogant, and that is a flaw that these animals suffer for in cases like this one.

[theresaj]

This animal did not belong as a pet. period.