Oliver the chimpanzee

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Image:Humanzee-smaller.jpgOliver is a chimpanzee who was once promoted as a missing link or Humanzee due to his bipedal walk. Oliver was acquired as a baby in the early 1970s by trainers Frank and Janet Burger. Some physical and behavioral evidence led the Burgers to believe Oliver was a creature other than a chimpanzee, perhaps a human-chimp hybrid: Oliver possesses a flatter face than his fellow chimpanzees as his teeth were removed, Oliver walks upright and never knucklewalks like his chimpanzee peers, and Oliver may have preferred human females over chimpanzee females, although this seems to be an urban legend and a legacy from when he was on The Ed Sullivan Show in the early 1970s (Sullivan said "Oliver was sold when he began to express sexual interest in his female owner and other women." [1]). Still, Oliver was not the clownish performer his chimp peers were, and other chimps avoided him. Some people claim he did not possess a typical odor common to chimpanzees.

Anthropologist David J. Daegling: "Oliver" is a habitually bipedal ape that has captured the imagination of both laypeople and scientists. He has been touted as a relict australopithecine, a bigfoot, or even the result of a clandestine human-chimp hybridization experiment. After years of lively debate, Oliver's DNA was sampled to settle the issue and perhaps provide us with a breathing version of the missing link. The results are in...and, alas, Oliver is just a standard-issue chimpanzee with a penchant for walking. [2]

Vincent Pace, a concert pianist and friend of the Burgers, tried to purchase Oliver but was outbid.

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His Japanese tour

Oliver's next owner was New York appellate lawyer Michael Miller, who promoted Oliver as a "missing link". Oliver appeared on Japanese TV with fraudulent promotions picturing him as a miniature and hairy human being. Though he was sent to Japan in a normal chimpanzee cage as cargo, Oliver was depicted as flying in the passenger cabin. Oliver's trip coincided with a concert promotion of the rock 'n roll group The Monkees and he was presented on Japanese television shows with Micky Dolenz spouting inaccurate scientific observations.

Miller claimed he was promised genuine scientific examination of Oliver including genetic testing by the Japanese promoters. Some Japanese results later proved false held that Oliver had 47 chromosomes. Some anthropologists observing Oliver's head, nose, ears, and preference for bipedal walking asserted the possibility that the chimp was a hybrid.

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Oliver disappears

Image:Humanzee2.jpg Miller sold him to Ralph Helfer, partner in a small Buena Park, California, theme park called Enchanted Village or Japanese Village. When the park closed down later that year, Helfer continued exhibiting Oliver in a new venture, Gentle Jungle, which changed locations a few times before finally closing in 1982. The Los Angeles Times did an extensive article about Oliver as a possible missing link or new sub-species of chimp. Oliver was transferred to the Wild Animal Training Center at Riverside, California, owned by Ken Decroo, but he was allegedly sold by Decroo in 1985. The last trainer to own Oliver was Bill Rivers. Rivers reported problems with Oliver not getting along with other chimps.

The Buckshire Corporation, a Pennsylvanian laboratory leasing out animals for scientific and cosmetic testing, purchased Oliver in 1989. His entrance examination revealed some previous rough handling. He was never used in experiments, but for the next seven years, his home was a 7 x 5 foot (2.1 x 1.5 meter) cage, whose restricted size resulted in muscle atrophy to the point that Oliver's limbs trembled. In 1996, Sharon Hursh, president of the Buckshire Corporation, inquired whether Primarily Primates could start a retirement effort for Buckshire's colony of 12 chimpanzees.

Older, blind, and arthritic, Oliver happily ended up at a spacious, open-air cage at Primarily Primates. The sanctuary's director, Wally Swett, was determined to solve the mystery of his celebrity guest's taxonomic identity once and for all.

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A normal "common chimp" says DNA

Swett asked University of Chicago geneticist Dr. David Ledbetter to examine Oliver's chromosomes, which he did in late 1996. Studies revealed that Oliver had forty eight, not forty seven, chromosomes, thus disproving the earlier claim and confirming that he had a normal chromosome count for a chimpanzee. Dr. John from Texas's Trinity University and cytogeneticist Dr. Charleen Moore from The University of Texas's Health Science Center conducted more extensive studies with Oliver, results of which were published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology in 1998.

Standard chromosomal studies fully supported Ledbetter's findings that Oliver had the diploid chromosome count expected for chimpanzees. His chromosomes possessed banding patterns typical for the common chimpanzee yet different from those of humans and bonobos, thereby excluding any possibility of Oliver being a hybrid. Oliver's mitochondrial DNA sequence corresponded very closely with that of the Central African subspecies of common chimpanzee; the closest correspondence of all was with a chimp specimen from Gabon in Central-West Africa. The study showed that Oliver's cranial morphology, ear shape, freckles and baldness were individual variations within the range of variability exhibited by the common chimpanzee.

That Oliver is an example of a rare bipedal sub-species of the common chimpanzee lineage is still possible. The radical differences in his behavior remain notable for their suggestion of his being to some extent culturally and physically more humanlike than most known chimpanzees. The bipedalism trait remains obscure in human DNA studies and may be real though undetected in Ledbetter's findings.

Another possibility is that his bipedalism and behaviour are due to domestication and animal training. This would imply fraudulence on part of the original owners.

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External links

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Bibliography

  • Science, 1996. "Mutant" Chimp Gets Gene Check. Science 274: 727.
  • Ely, J.J., Leland, M., Martino, M., Swett, W., and Moore, C.M., 1998. Technical report: chromosomal and mt DNA analysis of Oliver. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 105(3): 395-403.ja:オリバー君
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