Kidnapped from his household as an toddler, then raised by a drug lord earlier than ending up in a Colombian zoo, Yoko the chimpanzee has lived the final two years of his life alone.
He misplaced his final buddy, Chita, in 2023 when she escaped from the zoo with Pancho — Yoko’s rival — and the pair was shot useless by troopers out of human security issues.
On Sunday, 38-year-old Yoko was flown to Brazil to lastly be part of others of his form at a sanctuary there.
However will he make associates?
Yoko is in some ways extra human than chimp, his caregivers say. He makes use of a knife and fork, performs ball, watches tv and makes art work with crayons on paper and canvas.
He’s keen on consuming sweets and rooster.
Fed junk meals by his captor — a narco trafficker whose identify has not been divulged — Yoko has solely 4 of his tooth left. Chimps, like people, are supposed to have 32.
It was widespread for narco bosses resembling Pablo Escobar within the Nineteen Nineties to maintain unique animals as pets, together with tigers and lions, and even hippos and giraffes.
Yoko was taught to smoke and gown up in human garments — inflicting him to develop a pores and skin illness and lose a part of his fur.
“Yoko… is a extremely humanized chimpanzee, the diploma of tameness could be very excessive… He mainly behaves like a baby,” stated veterinarian Javier Guerrero.
The vet accompanied Yoko on the primary a part of his journey, dubbed “Operation Noah’s Ark,” from Ukumari Biopark, a zoo within the Colombian metropolis of Pereira.
– A smile just isn’t a smile –
Consultants concern Yoko could discover it laborious to adapt to life with different chimpanzees at Sorocaba within the Brazilian state of Sao Paolo — the biggest nice ape sanctuary in Latin America.
There are greater than 40 different chimps there, however vets and animal behaviorists fear Yoko could not slot in.
“Yoko… just isn’t a chimpanzee within the strict sense… he’s an animal that identifies far more with human beings,” stated Cesar Gomez, Ukumari’s animal coaching coordinator.
“To present you an instance, a smile is one thing constructive” for people, “however for chimpanzees, it’s one thing unfavorable and Yoko doesn’t perceive most of these communication,” he stated.
Yoko was seized from his proprietor’s lair by police in 2017 after spending an unknown period of time there, then taken to a refuge that flooded earlier than he grew to become a resident of the Pereira zoo.
“He was denied the prospect to be a chimpanzee and develop up together with his household,” assistant vet Alejandra Marin informed AFP.
Within the wild of their pure dwelling in Africa, chimpanzees die at about 40 or 45 years of age. They’re social, group animals, and with excellent care in captivity, they’ll stay as much as 60.
The chimpanzee is listed as an endangered species by the Worldwide Union for Conservation of Nature.
With Yoko’s switch Sunday, Colombia grew to become the primary nation on this planet to rid itself of totally captive nice apes, stated the Nice Ape Venture, an NGO.
“The good apes are chimpanzees, orangutans, gorillas, and bonobos — none of those species are endemic to our nation, they usually don’t have any motive to be right here,” stated Andrea Padilla, a Colombian senator of the Inexperienced Alliance who oversaw Yoko’s “deeply symbolic” switch.
“From a really younger age, Yoko was a sufferer of trafficking and commerce, handed from one drug trafficker to a different,” she added.
On Monday morning, Padilla posted on X that Yoko had landed in Brazil, and was “secure and sound and about to start out a brand new life together with his friends.”
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