Back in the 80's, a family friend had an autobody repair shop.
The circus was in town, and one of their trailers needed some dent work on a fender. The circus guy told the foreman "Don't worry about Fred, he's harmless. Just don't let him out" The foreman thought this was a joke. But as they started in on their repair, they realized there was a chimp in a cage on the trailer. As they unbolted the fender, the chimp reached his arm out of the cage and grabbed it - and would not let go. Even with three of the shop workers pulling on it.
They evidently bribed the chimp with cookies and were able to complete the repair.
I think the dangerousness of Chimpanzees, and the other tree dwelling apes is that we're not accustomed to their kind of strength.
A humans arm span is proportional to their height, so a 5'7" human has an arm span of 5'7" (roughly). A 5'7" chimp or orangutan has an armspan of around 8'. Which anyone who's a boxing fan knows that it's exceptionally difficult for someone to win against an opponent that can outreach them, especially if it's as significant as a foot.
Furthermore apes have significantly higher upper body strengths than humans. This is especially noticeable in young chimps and orangutans that look more like Popeye than a person. Even worse for humans is that we're accustomed to punching and kicking. Apes are accustomed to grappling with both hands and feet.
Flanged orangutans are considered highly dangerous, not only because they're significantly bigger, heavier and stronger than humans, but that it really doesn't matter if they get you with a hand or a foot, they've got enough strength in that limb that you can't let go.
So why does the media find all this amazing? Because humans are weak, and it seems like a divine intervention or something that made us survive because they play to their audiences naivety.
So how did we survive these brutal apes? Because we didn't evolve anywhere near them. Ape territories don't really overlap much, the different species have their niche to live in. So by the time humans encountered apes we'd already evolved tool use and sharpened sticks and heavy clubs were likely intimidating enough to keep the chimpanzee pack from messing with our ancestors.
This likely extended to other predator species of early humans too. Predators aren't dumb, they want an easy meal not something that could kill them. Once early humans started defending themselves with spears, wolves and lions would likely have looked elsewhere for food.
Doesn't that imply that Apes/chimps, or even wolves and lions are able to recognize and identify weapons? Or that their fear of humans evolved at the same rate as we adapted to use tools?
Discovery has a program called "Into the Pride" with Dave Salmoni, where he tries to live closely with a pride of lions to decrease their territorial aggression against humans in a safari zone (because if they don't bring in tourist dollars they get put down and a new pride gets brought in).
The lions certainly seem to understand that a spear is something they don't want to get close to. Even the overly aggressive seem to respect it, which seems absurd for a stick.
The question is how long it took before animals started recognizing weapons.
It could simply be a product of a stick increasing the persons silhouette, which makes us 'bigger' and the speed we can move it around at. Similar to why you're supposed to hold your arms out and wave and shout if you see a bear.
Maybe not in general as a species, but I find it hard to believe that on the scale of a single pack/pride/etc they wouldn't learn not to mess with (or at least be more cautious of) humans after 1 or 2 of their own were killed.
"The apes beat us in leg strength, too, despite our reliance on our legs for locomotion."
Oh we rely on our legs for locomotion, do we? Humans 'locomote' about as vigorously and often as chimps play Angry Birds whilst shotgunning bags of donettes.
That link you posted really lives up to its domain name in reporting quality.
Half of the pictures it cites as being of Charla Nash are really of Connie Culp, a woman who got a face transplant after being shot in the face by her husband.
"Police at the time of the attack speculated that a previous bout with Lyme disease may have accounted for the animal?s reported mood swings."
Right....keep me in a cage, drug me, allow me to eat and roam only on your terms, and see if I don't get incredibly angry from time to time.
This is an intelligent animal meant to be independent and free just like us. We do not have the right to own them and treat them worse than we treat our incarcerated rapists and murderers.
it's unfair to compare professional human athletes to caged chimpanzees in a zoo. Compare poor chimps to some pizza-eating couch potato human spending most of his time in front of TV (or computer monitor) instead, lifestyle matters! :-)
