A chimpanzee named Frodo who lived in Gombe National Park in Tanzaniabecame 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 at first was taken as a “prank”, then led to a behavioral disorder and a danger to visitors.
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The British anthropologist and primatologist Jane Goodall He was with the animal for a long time and noticed that it had violent attitudes. With the passing of time, it was considered a dangerous species for contact with people.
Frodo -That’s how he named it Goodall following the character from the Lord of the Rings- became a threat by learning to throw stones with great precision when he noticed that a person approached to interact. In addition, there were experiences that might be passed on to adults with tourists who were beaten and knocked over by the animal.
Despite these antecedents, the chimpanzee was removed from the park. On May 15, 2002, in an extremely tragic episode, Frodo He slipped into some trees and seeing three people walking, pounced on them and took Miasa, a little girl of just over a year who was walking along the paths of the park 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 visible Frodo, who, seeing the human presence, fled and left behind 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 euthanized.
the word of Jane Goodall He did not wait and in his sentences he foreshadowed that this event might happen due to the exacerbated behavior of the animal: “Frodo killed a human baby, something we had long predicted would happen.. 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”.
According to ‘The Sun’, following this event, Frodo he began to age and his body to show sequels of diseases. Although he was treated with antibiotics and experienced a slight improvement, he never recovered his health. On November 10, 2013, he died from an infected wound in his groin. He was 37 years old.
