Wild Chimps

Visited the zoo (in Charlottenburg) today in the company of my children and my sister-in-law with her children. There was a thunderstorm brewing outside, it was raining cat's and dogs and giraffes and we were kinda trapped in the primate building. Lucklily we had an ice-cream dispenser and a pocket full of coins for survival. Inside it was feeding time, never saw so many monkeys eat apples (I was always thinking: do those grow in Africa or Asia alot, where were all the bananas?).

We were standing in front of the cage of the chimps when all of a sudden they all entered at the same time with a a sort of feeding-frenzy way. Couldn't hear them that well behind the glass, but it was quite a show of vitality and unbounding energy as the hopped, skipped and jumped across the various ladders, ropes and dangling stretchers that posed as their fake habitat.

At first we believed that this was all just play. Then we noticed how their all their activity was directed at a soul chimp who seemed to take the brunt the monkey's aggressions. At one point a mother chimp holding her child jumped onto the back of our poor victim. This reminded me of one of those moves that wrestler's make from the ropes to humiliate an oppenent that is already down. After a while the chimp just cowered in one corner and a warden came, firing some water a the aggressor-chimps to protect our victimized chimp.