Colombia's lonely chimp Yoko finds new home in Brazil

by David SALAZAR

Kidnapped from his family as an infant, then raised by a drug lord before ending up in a Colombian zoo, Yoko the chimpanzee has lived the last two years of his life alone.

He lost his last friend, Chita, in 2023 when she escaped from the zoo with Pancho -- Yoko's rival -- and the pair was shot dead by soldiers out of human safety concerns.

On Sunday, 38-year-old Yoko was flown to Brazil to finally join others of his kind at a sanctuary there.

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But will he make friends?

Yoko is in many ways more human than chimp, his caregivers say. He uses a knife and fork, plays ball, watches television and makes artwork with crayons on paper and canvas.

He is fond of eating sweets and chicken.

Fed junk food by his captor -- a narco trafficker whose name has not been divulged -- Yoko has only four of his teeth left. Chimps, like humans, are meant to have 32.

It was common for narco bosses such as Pablo Escobar in the 1990s to keep exotic animals as pets, including tigers and lions, and even hippos and giraffes.

Yoko was taught to smoke and dress up in human clothes -- causing him to develop a skin disease and lose part of his fur.

"Yoko... is a highly humanized chimpanzee, the degree of tameness is very high... He basically behaves like a child," said veterinarian Javier Guerrero.

The vet accompanied Yoko on the first part of his journey, dubbed "Operation Noah's Ark," from Ukumari Biopark, a zoo in the Colombian city of Pereira.

- A smile is not a smile -

Experts fear Yoko may find it hard to adapt to life with other chimpanzees at Sorocaba in the Brazilian state of Sao Paolo -- the largest great ape sanctuary in Latin America.

There are more than 40 other chimps there, but vets and animal behaviorists worry Yoko may not fit in.

"Yoko... is not a chimpanzee in the strict sense... he is an animal that identifies much more with human beings," said Cesar Gomez, Ukumari's animal training coordinator.

"To give you an example, a smile is something positive" for humans, "but for chimpanzees, it is something negative and Yoko does not understand these types of communication," he said.

Yoko was seized from his owner's lair by police in 2017 after spending an unknown amount of time there, then taken to a refuge that flooded before he became a resident of the Pereira zoo.

"He was denied the chance to be a chimpanzee and grow up with his family," assistant vet Alejandra Marin told AFP.

In the wild in their natural home in Africa, chimpanzees die at about 40 or 45 years of age. They are social, group animals, and with good care in captivity, they can live up to 60.

The chimpanzee is listed as an endangered species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

With Yoko's transfer Sunday, Colombia became the first country in the world to rid itself of entirely captive great apes, said the Great Ape Project, an NGO.

"The great apes are chimpanzees, orangutans, gorillas, and bonobos -- none of these species are endemic to our country, and they have no reason to be here," said Andrea Padilla, a Colombian senator of the Green Alliance who oversaw Yoko's "deeply symbolic" transfer.

"From a very young age, Yoko was a victim of trafficking and trade, passed from one drug trafficker to another," she added.

On Monday morning, Padilla posted on X that Yoko had landed in Brazil, and was "safe and sound and about to start a new life with his peers."