The Tragedy of Travis

Have you been following or at least heard about the story of Travis? Travis is a pet chimp who for years was a cute, harmless creature until a few days ago when he attacked a 55 year old woman and basically tore her face off. Then he turned on the police who had to shoot him. The woman is in critical condition. Friends and neighbors are shocked-not at the poor woman's condition but because they simply didn't think it possible for this heretofore lovable little guy to do such a thing. Listen carefully, people. I don't care how cute it looks or what kind of behavior record it has, you absolutely can not trust a wild animal. It's as simple as that. They are completely unpredictable. Their instincts have been passed down from one generation to the next and if they perceive a threat of any kind at all they will attack. You can not 'train' or 'condition' these behavior sets out of them. I don't care how kind you are to them. The larger tragedy here is that this is not new stuff. Wildlife specialists have been warning people for years about this kind of thing but there are those who insist that if an animal looks 'cute' and behaves like it's actually lovable, it will be OK. Not so. And that goes for the Koala Bear too. In addition to everything else, it's simply not fair to the animals to continue to make pets of them. Very often when the well-meaning people who acquire them find out the truth, they simply abandon the animals. Nice. There needs to be tighter regulation on this matter.