A chimpanzee named Frodo who lived in the Gombe National Park in Tanzania became sadly famous for having committed a terrible deed: he killed a girl and ate her.
Born on June 30, 1976, he began to show some unusual signs of violence at a very early age and what was initially taken as a “mischief”, later led to a behavioral disorder. As well as a danger to visitors.
British anthropologist and primatologist Jane Goodall spent a lot of time with the animal and warned that it had violent attitudes. Over time, it was considered a dangerous species for contact with people.
Frodo a violent chimpanzee
Frodo -so he named him Goodall following the character in the Lord of the Rings– became a threat by learning to throw stones with great precision when he noticed that a person was approaching to interact. In addition, there were experiences that might have happened to adults with tourists who were beaten and knocked down by the animal.
Despite these antecedents, the chimpanzee was not removed from the park. On May 15, 2002, in an extremely tragic episode, Frodo slipped through some trees and seeing three people walking, he pounced on them and grabbed Miasa. The little girl, just over 1 year old, who walked the paths of the park along with her mother, Rukia Sadiki. “I felt overwhelmed by the sudden attack. The chimpanzee began to unwrap the cloth with which he had tied my baby to his back and then fled with my daughter,” the woman recounted years following the tragedy.
After a search throughout the property, the park rangers made Frodo visible, who, noticing the human presence, fled and left a terrifying image: the baby beaten and lifeless, with body parts eaten by the animal. This fact shocked the world and it was strongly requested that he be sacrificed.
They predicted a tragic moment
Jane Goodall’s word was immediate and in her sentences she foreshadowed that this might happen due to the animal’s exacerbated behavior: “Frodo killed to a human baby. Something we had predicted would happen for a long time. Chimpanzees are hunters, and although their favorite prey in Gombe is baby monkeys, humans are another type of primate.”
Shadrack Kamenya, director of chimpanzee research at Gombe Park, said: “Frodo’s behavior during this incident seemed more like part of the natural hunting behavior of chimpanzees. They seem to be able to see human babies just as they see the young of other species such as colobus monkeys and baboons: as potential prey.”
As stated The Sun, After this fact, Frodo began to age and his body to show signs of diseases. He was treated with antibiotics and he experienced a slight improvement. But he never got his health back. On November 10, 2013, he died from an infected groin wound. He was 37 years old.
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