A Belgium zoo has asked a visitor to refrain from drawing the attention of one of its chimpanzees after four years of weekly visits.
Adie Timmermans claims to have become friends with 38-year-old Chita the chimp during her visits to the Antwerp Zoo, saying the two were “having an affair” when the zoo reportedly broke them apart. Timmermans finds it unfair that other visitors are still able to see the chimp but not her, the New York Post reports.
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“I love that animal and he loves me,” Timmermans told local news channel ATV. “I haven’t got anything else. Why do they want to take that away?”
The Antwerp ZOO told the Washington Examiner that important parts of Timmermans’s story had been lost in translation. While Timmermans is still allowed to visit Chita, the zoo asked her not to try and draw his attention away from the other chimpanzees.
“We asked Mrs Timmermans to let him be a chimpanzee among chimpanzees and not to stay with him for too long nor attract his attention,” Ilse Segers, the zoo’s manager of press and communication, said in an email. “We explained [to] Mrs. Timmermans why we ask this from her (and all our visitors) and why it is better for Chita himself. We hope she will do so in the future.”
Segers explained Chita was originally raised by humans and that despite being brought to the zoo almost 30 years ago, he is still fond of humans. For the sake of his own well-being, Segers said, Chita needs to fit in with the other chimpanzees as much as possible, which a relationship with a human could impede.
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One of the zoo‘s curators, Sarah Lafaut, explained to ATV that Chita has struggled to fit in with other chimpanzees and that they want to make sure he is happy.
“Chita was brought to the zoo 30 years ago because he was a pet at the time and became unmanageable,” Lafaut told ATV. “He learned chimpanzee behavior with us, but the interest in humans has remained.”
