Girl banned from zoo for loving relationship with chimpanzee: ‘He loves me’

A Belgian woman has been banned from visiting a zoo in Belgium after she was accused of having a relationship that was detrimental to the socialization of a chimpanzee. “I love that animal, it loves me,” Adi Timmermans told ATV about his deportation.

As shown in some of the pictures, the female and male chimpanzee, called chitta, have been kissing and sharing attention weekly for the past four years. The woman has joined Primate and is considering a ban, which has been an absurdity since last Thursday (19). “I have nothing else. Why did they want to take this from me?” She tells Belgian TV with tears in her eyes.

According to the zoo, the relationship between man and animal is detrimental to the chimpanzee’s social life because when he began to interact with Timmermans and other visitors, other animals in the group began to ignore him.

“When the citta is constantly surrounded by visitors, other animals ignore him and do not consider him part of the group,” explains zookeeper Sarah Lauffald, who says the animal is excluded from the captive group for about 15 hours a day. .

However, this process is unlikely to be reversed because the chimpanzee was raised as a domestic animal for more than half of its life before being donated to the zoo.

For example, in 2008, the primary was involved in violent fights with other captive male monkeys. As a result, Chitta likes people but not monkeys.