THE APE WHO WENT TO COLLEGE

IS language skills were just the start of his talents. As a youngster Chantek attended pre-school classes alongside human toddlers. The children enjoyed having him as a classmate and he showed particular aptitude for painting which would become one of his favourite pastimes.

He quickly became a regular fixture of campus life and was for obvious reasons well recognised and widely liked among the university’s students. He enjoyed attending lectures and was even photographed for the yearbook.

Dr Miles also taught him how to use money. He was given an allowance which he typically spent on car rides and meals at restaurants. His favourite was the US fast food chain Dairy Queen. He loved it so much that he learned the route and was able to direct drivers who went wrong. He quickly developed a taste for cheeseburgers (which he called “cheese-meat-bread”), ice cream and other junk food.

It wasn’t all play though. Chantek proved capable of using an array of tools including implements such as screwdrivers, pliers and metal cutters. He was also the only animal to engage in making his own jewellery. And with his development of language and knowledge of the wider world came a tendency to tell mischievous lies. Dr Miles said: “He’d tell me he had to go to the bathroom and then go in there just to play with the knobs on the toilet.”

This was a happy time. Dr Miles described it as “magical” and said: “Sometimes I felt like his servant but I very much thought of Chantek as my foster son.”

Sadly this idyllic life could not go on. As other experiments with raising primates in a human environment have confirmed, when the animals get older they also become troublesome. Their strong teeth, powerful jaws, astounding upper body strength and the ability to use their feet as a second set of hands all mean that even if they do so by accident they are capable of seriously injuring humans.

In Chantek’s case he was getting harder and harder to control. He was able to dismantle fences and roam the university at will. Some students were scared and there were reports that he had attacked a woman on campus although she was unhurt.

Zoo Atlanta, where Chantek spent his final years, also warns that: “Great apes have complex social and cognitive needs that cannot be provided for within the context of a private human home.”

This was certainly Dr Miles’ opinion and in the 1980s she began SPECIAL: Chantek the orangutan and, inset, working on one of his paintings; far right, as a baby with his surrogate parent Dr Lyn Miles to warn that he needed to be with his own kind.

For such an intelligent animal what followed was unfathomably cruel. When he was eight years old, Chantek was tranquillised and taken away to a research lab at the Yerkes Primate Research Center. No warning was given and once there he was forced once again to live as an orangutan in a tiny cage.

It was weeks before Dr Miles was allowed to see him. When she did, he told her: “Mother Lyn, get the car, go home.” In return she asked him if he was ill. “Hurt,” the orangutan replied and when she asked him where he signed back: “Feelings.”

Dr Miles fought to have him moved. It took 11 years but she was finally successful and in 1997 he was moved to Zoo Atlanta where Daily Express Thursday August 10 2017 he had “the opportunity to live as an orangutan, surrounded by a team of dedicated, compassionate and highly qualified carers”. He never quite integrated, continuing to refer to himself as an “orangutan person” and his fellows as “orange dogs”. It was undoubtedly though an upgrade on his previous accommodation.

When he arrived at the zoo, he was seriously obese and had to be put on a strict diet. He later developed heart disease, a common problem among zooreared great apes.

Again Chantek was to become a pioneer. He was the first orangutan to undergo a voluntary electrocardiogram (ECG), undertaking the procedure while fully awake. He also participated in voluntary cardiac ultrasounds and blood pressure readings as well as allowing vets to take blood samples. All this helped vets (with the help of human cardiologists) to monitor his heart problems.

Orangutans live for 35 to 45 years in the natural world. At 39 Chantek was a good age, though his long life has done nothing to lessen the sadness at his passing. Hayley Murphy, vice president of Zoo Atlanta’s animal division, said: “Chantek will be deeply missed by his family here.”

As for Dr Miles, she continued to see him to the end and in an interview this week said: “He was very special to me. The last time I saw him, not too long ago, he asked me for cheese-meat-bread and for me to get the car and take him home.”

How sad that they never got the chance.