2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-17 17:22
More than 30 years ago, 20 chimpanzees were sent to one of the remote islands belonging to the Republic of Côte d'Ivoire to participate in laboratory research. The monkeys were on their own all this time, and only at the beginning of this year the founder of the rescue center found out about them. Arriving on the island, the woman discovered that out of 20 chimpanzees only one survived - and after several years of loneliness, he met people unfamiliar to him as the most dear creatures on the planet.
When in this year's feral Estelle Raballand (Estelle Raballand), founder of the Chimpanzee Rescue Center in Guinea, first arrived on the island, she saw Ponzo (Ponso) meeting her with open arms. After several years of loneliness, it seemed to him that he would never see anyone again. By this time, Ponzo was about 40 years old, and whether he will continue to live alone or be able to move to a more acceptable place depends on his blood tests.
Ponzo meets Estelle for the first time:
In 1983, the New York Blood Center decided to send 20 chimpanzees to a remote island where they would not be able to contact other animals. The reason for this was the numerous medical experiments carried out with these monkeys. Scientists did not want possible viruses or other diseases in the blood of experimental animals to spread. Isolation seemed at that time the best way out of the situation, because the climate on the island was very close to the natural range of chimpanzees.
The biggest miscalculation of this decision was that the monkeys, who had lived in the laboratory all their lives, did not know how to survive in the wild. For several years, chimpanzees have been battling hunger and disease. Ponzo had a couple and two children, but they all died. One of the local villagers named Germaine Zhamal sometimes visited the island and left the monkeys with food and fresh water. Only Ponzo managed to survive.
Zhamal says that he saw how the population of the island gradually decreased. He alone was unable to save the monkeys. When the entire Ponzo family died in 2013, chimpanzees threw mud at their bodies as if trying to bury them. And only two years after Ponzo was left completely alone, Estelle learned of his existence.
"We are now working hard to find a new location for Ponzo. Perhaps it will be a nature reserve in Côte d'Ivoire, maybe in another country. It is important that we find such a place in western Africa." However, this is not as easy as it sounds. "Most of the reserves are overcrowded, but they do not have enough money. It will cost a lot of money to transport Ponzo," says Estelle.
Now Estelle went to the laboratory to do a blood test on Ponzo and find out if he is contagious, if he can live with other animals. These analyzes will decide the fate of Ponzo. On her last visit to the island of Ponzo, Estelle wrote in her blog: "Today we walked around the island. He (Ponzo) held my hand all the time. It touched me to the core."
It is not always possible to guess how animals will behave, even with tons of books about their behavior. In our review " 11 wild animals that showed themselves from an unusual side"you can just see photos of such examples.
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