Baby Chimp Stomped to Death by Fellow Members of Zoo Clan

The soap opera of life and love among the chimpanzees at the Los Angeles Zoo took an ugly turn Monday when a grim new element was added: murder.

The victim was Toshi, a female born less than four months ago under mysterious circumstances.

The suspects, according to zoo officials, are two members of a gang of adolescent males, Ripley and Jerrad.

Judy Shay, a zoo spokeswoman, said that as several zoo visitors watched in horror, Ripley and Jerrad wrested Toshi away from her mother Monday morning and “stomped” on the little primate.

Because of the strength of the aggressive adolescent males, keepers are not allowed to enter the exhibit area and confront the animals one on one before they have been herded into their indoor pens, Shay said.

As a result, she said, the keepers were not able to intercede until it was too late. The precise cause of Toshi’s death will be announced after an autopsy.

Toshi first made headlines when she was born unexpectedly on Jan. 31.

For one thing, none of the zookeepers had noticed that her mother, Yoshi, had been pregnant. For another, none of the males to which Yoshi had access seemed a candidate for fatherhood.

Three of them, including Jerrad, had undergone vasectomies. Two others, one of them Ripley, were thought too young for amorous advances. The sixth male, Toto, was getting pretty old and had never “shown interest” in the opposite sex, said zoo curator Michael Dee.

Within a month, two more females were found to be pregnant. A seventh male, Shaun, eventually was thought to be the father in both cases. The zoo has not said which male might have impregnated Yoshi.

Concerned about the potential baby boom, zoo officials began administering the pill (the same kind that women take).

And all the while, despite a little carelessness on the part of her mother, little Toshi flourished.

Zookeepers, who said they wanted her to “grow up a chimp-raised infant, rather than one raised by humans in the nursery,” allowed other chimps in the exhibit area to handle her.

“We felt it was the right thing to do,” said the zoo’s director of health services, Charles Sedgwick.

But Yoshi was not a very protective mother, the officials said, and although most of the chimpanzees were gentle with Toshi, “the juvenile males were aggressive.”

“We sometimes gamble in these instances,” Sedgwick said.

The gamble failed. About 11 a.m. Monday, as visitors wandered by the expansive, landscaped exhibit area, Ripley and Jerrad suddenly attacked.

“All of us are sick in our hearts,” Sedgwick said. “The loss of this beautiful infant leaves us feeling empty and sad.”