Chimp Attack Reaction Paper

For this response paper, I chose to write about the chimp attacks that occurred to the intern by the name of Kristen M. Howard and a women from Connecticut, Charla Nash. Howard was an intern at Chimps Inc. in Oregon when she got attack by a chimp named Kimie. Howard was cleaning an empty cage when Kimie managed to get through the doors of the tunnels that lead to the cage she was cleaning. The doors to the tunnel leading to the cage were supposed to be locked but on the day of the attack, the doors somehow were unlocked. Kimie not only attacked Howard once, but twice. Kimie jumped on Howards back, biting and hitting her multiple times and also bit off most of Howard’s thumb (Green). Charla Nash was attacked by a pet chimp, Travis, which was owned by a friend of hers. Nash’s friend called her one day in February, 2009 to help get Travis back into the home in which he lived in with his owner (Canning, Clarke and Ferran). Travis’ attack left Nash blinded, she lost both of her hands and her face was completely disfigured (Collins).
Chimps are extremely territorial. They will often go to neighboring territories and where they will attack neighboring groups of chimps to gain that territory and access to food (Chimpanzees As Neighbors). Research done by Sylvia Amsler, John Mitani and David Watts witnessed such attacks as they conducted a decade-long study of a large group of chimps living in Ngogo, Kibale National Park, Uganda (Viegas). What they witnessed on several occasions was chimps traveling to neighboring territories and performing attacks on their neighbors to gain territory. With that being said, I think there could have been two reasons why Kimie attacked