By Wairagala Wakabi
Those smiling chimpanzees beloved by circus-goers have turned out to be childkillers. Last week, officials of the Jane Goodall Institute in Uganda - which is dedicated to preserving chimps - were quoted in BBC's Wildlife Magazine as saying chimpanzees had killed eight children, and injured many others in Ugandan national parks.
The Ugandan government is taking urgent steps to prevent the revelations from damaging the valuable trade in tourists who come to visits its chimps and mountain gorillas.
Debby Cox, the director of the institute, said the aggressive behaviour of the chimps was caused by closer proximity between the animals and humans.
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Ugandan wildlife officials responded by assuring that chimp attacks are on the decline in recent years. This is partly the result of the government creating extensive buffer zones between wildlife reserves and human settlements.
They said increased human encroachment on game sanctuaries and accompanying large-scale deforestation, had caused a rise in chimpanzee attacks on humans and some deaths.
Experts disagree on why exactly the chimps attack people. Dr Michael Gavin, who carried out the study reported on by Wildlife Magazine, said the technique used by the chimps to kill or maim the children mirrors the way they tear apart other prey, suggesting that they were motivated by hunger.
"In most cases they bite off the limbs first before disembowelling them, just as they would the red Columbus monkey which is one favourite prey," he said.
But officials at the Uganda Wildlife Education Centre insist chimps are primarily vegetarian and they mostly attack humans only to defend their habitat.
They said chimps had injured more people than they had killed, and that even the bodies of those killed were usually found intact.
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