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Flint said Oberle knew the risks of working with chimps and would not want them blamed for the attack. "He adored them," she said. "Since he was a little boy he just loved them, and I just have faith that ... when all is said and done, he's going to go right back into it." The sanctuary has been closed to tourists since the attack, while government and police officials investigate. The Jane Goodall Institute South Africa is conducting its own investigation. "Everyone at Chimp Eden is hurting," Cussons said, saying the thoughts of staff members were with Oberle and his family. Cussons said the two chimps that attacked Oberle, Amadeus and Nikki, had been isolated in their night pens since the attack. He said they were calm and exhibiting remorse, which he said chimps show by behaving submissively. Human-animal contact is kept to a minimum at the sanctuary, designed as a haven for chimpanzees, which are not native to South Africa, that have been rescued from elsewhere in Africa. Some lost their parents to poachers in countries where they are hunted for their meat or to be sold as pets, and others were held in captivity in cruel conditions. "They come here and we rehabilitate them by giving them space ... and contact with their own kind," Cussons said. According to the sanctuary's website, one of the chimps involved in the attack, Amadeus, was orphaned in Angola and brought to South Africa in 1996, where he was kept at the Johannesburg Zoo until the sanctuary opened. The other, Nikki, came from Liberia in 1996 and also was held at the zoo until becoming among the first chimps at the sanctuary. Before arriving in South Africa, Nikki, whose parents were killed for their meat, had been treated like a son by his owners, who dressed him in clothes, shaved his body and taught him to eat at a table using cutlery, the website said. In the United States, a Connecticut woman, Charla Nash, was attacked in 2009 by a friend's chimpanzee that ripped off her nose, lips, eyelids and hands before being killed by police. The woman was blinded and has had a face transplant. Lawyers for Nash filed papers this week accusing state officials of failing to seize the animal before the mauling despite a warning that it was dangerous.
[Associated
Press;
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