When animals attack...

Inspired by the mauling of the poor guy who made the greatest mistake of his life by trying to celebrate his former pet chimp's 39th birthday, I decided to do a little research about the strength of chimpanzees. You see, ever since that tragic news story graced Yahoo's webpage I've been bandying about the claim that chimps are 5 times as strong as humans with very little evidence to support it (some might assert that I offer no evidence - and they'd be right). After a few productive hours online, I think I've turned the tide. To the extent that the Internet is a reliable source of information, the following exerpt from straightdope.com should provide proof of the validity of my statements:

"It's a lot easier to get a chimp in roller skates than it is to get him to pump iron--hence, most of the data on chimp strength is anecdotal and decidedly unscientific. In tests at the Bronx Zoo in 1924, a dynamometer--a scale that measures the mechanical force of a pull on a spring--was erected in the monkey house. A 165-pound male chimpanzee named "Boma" registered a pull of 847 pounds, using only his right hand (although he did have his feet braced against the wall, being somewhat hip, in his simian way, to the principles of leverage). A 165-pound man, by comparison, could manage a one-handed pull of about 210 pounds. Even more frightening, a female chimp, weighing a mere 135 pounds and going by the name of Suzette, checked in with a one-handed pull of 1,260 pounds. (She was in a fit of passion at the time; one shudders to think what her boyfriend must have looked like next morning.) In dead lifts, chimps have been known to manage weights of 600 pounds without even breaking into a sweat. A male gorilla could probably heft an 1,800-pound weight and not think twice about it."

Now this may just be my fascination with animals talking, but, DAMN, those statistics are amazing - and, as if it needs to be said, terrifying. I remember hearing about chimps ripping monkeys in pieces during hunting raids, but what I did not realize was that doing the same to a human being would require just slightly more effort on the ape's part. I guess the moral of the story is that chimpanzees are like gremlins: adorable creatures that are okay to keep as pets so long as you don't engage in certain conduct, i.e., feed them after midnight or get them wet (or, in this case, bake them a birthday cake).