Famous tool-using chimp kills its first human as child woman butchered

A famous tool-using chimpanzee ripped a baby girl from her mother’s arms before taking her into the forest to butcher her and harvest her organs.

Distraught mother Seny Zogba was working in a cassava field in Bossou, in Guinea, when a chimp sunk his teeth into her and stole her eight-month-old baby, named as Yoh Hélène. 

The little girl’s mutilated body was found 3 km from the Nimba Mountains Nature Reserve, with witnesses claiming she had been eviscerated – and it feared the chimp may have used his tools to maim her. 

Chief researcher Gen Yamakoshi chillingly told The Times the gruesome killing was because the chimps ‘no longer fear humans’. 

An angry mob directed their fury towards the scientists who have been studying the remarkable animal community for decades, and brought the baby’s corpse to their Bossou Environmental Research Institute. 

A famous tool-using chimpanzee ripped a baby girl from her mother’s arms before taking her into the forest to butcher her and harvest her organs (Jeje, one of the chimpanzees in Bossou, Guinea, pictured yawning in December 2017)

Distraught mother Seny Zogba was working in a cassava field in Bossou, in Guinea, when a chimp sunk his teeth into her and stole her eight-month-old baby, named as Yoh Hélène

They then ransacked the building, destroying and setting fire to equipment including drones, computers and over 200 documents, the centre’s managers said. 

Joseph Doré, a young member of the group from Bossou, said ‘it’s the way she was killed, that’s what angered the population’.

Local ecologist Alidjiou Sylla said the dwindling supply of food in the reserve was pushing the animals to leave the protected area more frequently, increasingly the likelihood of attacks.

The research centre said it had recorded six chimpanzee attacks on humans within the reserve since the start of the year.

Moussa Koya, another youth leader, said ‘It was not their will [to be violent] but it has become the habit of the chimpanzees.’ 

Mr Yamakoshi though said it wasn’t clear whether the attacks are because of food or ‘excitement’. 

‘It is similar behaviour to how chimps treat one another,’ he said. ‘If they are excited they cannot control their behaviour.’ 

There are just seven left in Guinea’s Bossou forest, which forms part of the Nimba Mountains Nature Reserve, and is close to subsistence farming communities of the Nzerekore Region.

In 2022, the oldest member of a chimpanzee tribe, Fana, died in solitude age 71, leaves behind two sons, Foaf and Fanwa.

The tiny community of apes use stone hammers and anvils to crack open nuts – the most sophisticated act ever observed of humanity’s genetically closest relative. 

The great apes live in the wild but share the territory and its resources with the locals, who protect them, believing them to be reincarnated ancestors. 

Chimpanzees are respected in Guinea and traditionally given gifts in the form of food, prompting some to venture out of the protected area and into human settlements, where they can sometimes attack.

The research centre said it had recorded six chimpanzee attacks on humans within the reserve since the start of the year

The tiny community of apes, famed for their remarkable use of tools, lives in a forest around the village of Bossou, in the far southeastern corner of Guinea

A number of chimps have been shown to use tools – including this one at a sanctuary in Kenya – but its prevalence among the Bossou tribe in Guinea makes them particularly interesting 

But Bossou elder Michael Gamada Koïba said locals now don’t know ‘what kind of chimpanzees they are’ after the fatality. 

Up until 2003, the Bossou chimp group had been relatively stable at around 21 animals. But it lost seven members to the flu that year.

It has also been affected by human activities in the area.

Locals traditionally use slash-and-burn agriculture, and though they had preserved a 320-hectare block of forest around Bossou, surrounding deforestation has cut it off from the rest of the Mount Nimba Strict Nature Reserve, where there are more numerous chimp communities.

Slash-and-burn agriculture sees people cultivate lands until they become depleted, then clear forests to create new lands, and repeat the cycle.

The UNESCO World Heritage-listed reserve straddles Guinea’s borders with Liberia and Ivory Coast.

The Nimba Mountains are also home to one of Guinea’s largest iron ore reserves, which has raised concern among environmentalists about the impact of mining on chimpanzees.