Terrified chimp on the loose in Japan for two hours

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I didn’t realize Japan had insulated power lines. That’s rather fortunate for the chimp.

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Glad they got him, though monkeys running loose around Japan are not exactly unknown.

That’s a really nice zoo too. IIRC there’s also a statue of Babe Ruth in the park. I think the site used to be a baseball stadium and Ruth visited it once.

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Poor guy. I’m glad nobody got hurt though. I wouldn’t go near an angry/scared chimp for a millions dollars. Chimpanzee attacks are more like hate crimes. They hold you with their four powerful limbs, then start taking bites from your face, genitals, and hands.

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They look like low voltage lines and are low enough to be a potential hazard. Similar lines here would be insulated, though because we don’t have earthquakes most of ours are underground.
I’m sorry for the chimp. Cities are not a good environment for zoo animals.

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Poor guy. :frowning:

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The lines above the step down transformer on the pole are insulated. Perhaps they are where you are too, but in the US they would be bare metal.

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Maybe it’s a non-conductive chimp. I’m surprised nobody else thought of that.

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That’s a chimpanzee not a monkey. Monkeys are mostly capable of being annoying, chimps eat faces off of people.

Living somewhere that has monkeys roaming about = kinda’ quirky

Living someplace where chimpanzees roam about = nightmare land.

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It looked like quite a fall, but zoo officials say he is OK.

Zoo officials are full of shit. He hit that pavement hard.

Can’t you safely touch a single power line so long as you aren’t also grounded and/or touching another line?

Well at least a highly resistive chimpanzee.

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This chimpanzee was bridging two conductors with its left and right hands. Very dangerous because your heart is right between the two. You might get away with bridging neutral and earth but it must surely have touched active.

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Yeah, birds do it all the time. The problem is when the animals body bridges two different power lines.

Where I live we had extensions put on a lot of (maybe all) the power poles because birds with large wingspans would land on the line supports and the wings would touch different lines. Little birds don’t have this problem, but large raptors and owls would apparently get nuked every so often.

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He landed on a mat. (The blue thing in the video.)

Animal control used a similar tactic with a bear in a tree at the local college a few years back. They used a bigger pad for the bear. There’s probably video out there, but I love this still:

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[1]: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/07/11/falling-bear-colorado-university_n_7776540.html

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I know it’s already been addressed, but: OOOOOK.

Monkeys can bite through arteries and pet monkeys have killed people. For chimps eating the faces off people, read Jane Goodall.

I hate to point out the obvious (even though I often do so anyway), but might be probable that the chimp was terrified because they were chasing it in the first place. FFS, let it have a vacation for a few days. Organisms have lives of their own, besides existing to entertain people.

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They must have shut off the power. Insulated overhead lines aren’t that uncommon, but insulation does get shredded by exposure to the elements, and considering how infrequently this sort of thing happens it’s not worth the cost of replacing entire powerline runs just because they’re unsafe for escaped chimpanzees to swing around on.

I think they were also switched off.