![]() ![]() For a moment he, too, seems disoriented, his steps directionless. Then Oliver appears and immediately begins striding around on two legs, his body hair bristling with excitement. The first few chimps to emerge, their limbs weakened from inactivity, knuckle-walk gingerly around their new enclosure looking frightened and confused. He was not completely sure, however, until the animals had been unloaded and released from their transport cages. Spock ears and other distinctive features. But even in the darkness of the truck Swett, who as a young man had followed Oliver's story closely, thought he could recognize the ape's Mr. When he reached sexual maturity, he was interested only in human females.ĭuring Wally Swett's negotiations with Buckshire Corporation, Sharon Hursh, the company's president, had insisted that there was no reason to link the aged ape in her possession with the freakish creature whose likeness had once appeared in the pages of Time. He did not get along with other chimps, and separation from his human companions was said to bring him to tears. In the evening he might sit and watch TV with the couple, sometimes preparing a nightcap for Frank and himself of whiskey and 7UP. When he lived under the care of Frank and Janet Burger, the animal trainers who raised him, Oliver occasionally fed the dogs and did other chores, relaxing afterward with a cup of coffee. His body odor was said to be strangely sharp, wholly atypical of chimpanzees. His ears were high and pointed, his skin pale and freckled, and his aspect unusually gentle and intelligent. His lower face lacked the usual pronounced forward jut. His head was bald and abnormally small in proportion to his body, with a cranium more rounded than a typical chimp's. Oliver became a celebrity in January of 1976, when he was approximately sixteen years old. Wally Swett believed he might be alive, and crouching in one of the cages in the back of the truck. Most of those who remembered him at all presumed he was dead. ![]() After drifting for a decade from one California theme park to another, Oliver faded from view. The tests were un-confirmed, however, and the media soon lost interest. Preliminary genetic tests were said to indicate that he had forty-seven chromosomes, whereas human beings have forty-six, and common chimpanzees forty-eight. This extraordinary claim was based on several behavioral and morphological peculiarities, especially Oliver's determined preference for walking upright on two legs. Twenty years before, a chimp by that name had enjoyed a brief, feverish celebrity as a purported "missing link" between apes and men. The paperwork from Buckshire indicated that the shipment included an elderly primate named Oliver. He was eager to get a glimpse of one in particular. Swett came out to oversee the unloading of the animals. Wally Swett, the director of Primarily Primates, had been negotiating for eight months to take custody of them. The chimps on the truck had come from a Pennsylvania research company called the Buckshire Corporation, and their delivery to Primarily Primates represented one of the first attempts anywhere to retire chimps to a sanctuary after they've been used in medical experiments. On April 1, 1996, a truck carrying twelve chimpanzees backed up to the delivery gate at Primarily Primates, an animal sanctuary north of San Antonio. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |