Oliver (chimpanzee)

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Oliver, the "Humanzee".
Oliver, the "Humanzee".

Oliver is a performing Common Chimpanzee who was once promoted as a missing link, or a "Humanzee" (a human-chimp hybrid).

However, despite his somewhat unusual appearance and behavior, Oliver is, biologically speaking, a normal chimpanzee. Anthropologist David J. Daegling (in Carroll 2005) writes:

"'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."[verification needed]

Contents

[edit] Early life

Oliver was acquired as a young animal (around 2 years old: Shuker 1999) in the early 1970s by trainers Frank and Janet Berger; supposedly, the chimpanzee had been caught in the Democratic Republic of Congo (then Zaire). Some physical and behavioral evidence led the Bergers 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 was habitually bipedal (before being struck with arthritis), never walking on his knuckles like his chimpanzee peers; and Oliver may have preferred human females over chimpanzee females (Shuker 1999); During a recent Discovery Channel special, Janet Berger, herself, claimed that Oliver was becoming attracted to her when he reached the age of 16. He mounted her and tried to mate with her. After he tried it several times she got angry and sold Oliver. 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 (Shuker 1999).

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

[edit] His Japanese tour

Oliver's next owner was New York appellate lawyer Michael Miller, who purchased Oliver from the Bergers in or before 1976 (Shuker 1999) and 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 providing inaccurate scientific observations.

Miller claimed he was promised genuine scientific examination of Oliver including genetic testing by the Japanese promoters. Some Japanese results held that Oliver had 47 chromosomes (see Ely et al. 1998 for the base of this claim). Some anthropologists observing Oliver's head, nose, ears, and preference for bipedal walking asserted the possibility that the chimp was a hybrid[citation needed].

[edit] Oliver is sold

Oliver, displaying his tendency for bipedal locomotion.
Oliver, displaying his tendency for bipedal locomotion.

Miller in 1977 sold him to Ralph Helfer, partner in a small Buena Park, California, theme park called Enchanted Village which was built on the site of the defunct Japanese Deer Park And Village amusement attraction. When Enchanted Village 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 nine 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 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.

[edit] Scientific study results

Swett asked University of Chicago geneticist Dr. David Ledbetter to examine Oliver's chromosomes. These studies were performed in 1996 (Anonymous 1996)[citation needed] and 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, although recent studies by the Discovery Channel's Big Science had stated that he in fact has 47 chromosomes[citation needed]. Oliver's cranial morphology, ear shape, freckles and baldness fall within the range of variability exhibited by the Common Chimpanzee (Hill 1969). Dr. John Ely from Texas's Trinity University and cytogeneticist Dr. Charleen Moore from The University of Texas's Health Science Center with their co-workers conducted more extensive studies with Oliver, results of which were published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology (Ely et al. 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 mtDNA D-loop sequence corresponded most with that of the Central Chimpanzee subspecies Pan troglodytes troglodytes; the closest correspondence of all (c.95% base pairs in common) was with 2 specimens from Gabon and Central Africa; samples of the more northernly Nigerian Chimpanzee P. t. vellerosus were not available. 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. Oliver's bipedalism and behavior were most probably due to domestication and animal training, and his head shape was mainly a consequence of his teeth being removed at an early age to prevent biting (Jolly 1976).

On the other hand, the mtDNA D-loop does not carry information regarding the bipedalism trait; Oliver's walking style may yet be inborn and inherited [original research?]. However, the biogeography of the variation in chimpanzee populations makes this rather unlikely; more recent findings on the geography of behavioral diversity in chimpanzees[citation needed] raise the novel possibility that Oliver might have belonged to one or a few more bipedal "tribes" of Common Chimpanzees (which would be scientifically considered morphs and not subspecies).

It is also possible that he manifests a mutation that we have in common with the ancestor of both contemporary chimps and humans. [original research?]

[edit] Oliver Today

This section documents a current event.
Information may change rapidly as the event progresses.

Oliver remains at Primarily Primates in the temporary care of wildlife rehabilitationist Lee Theisen-Watt. Though little is known of his present condition, he is still a source of media curiosity. Some writers[citation needed] propose that even though he has been determined to be genetic chimpanzee, further study of Oliver's unique traits might yield useful information. Though his health may be compromised by being kept for long under unsatisfying conditions, he has barely exceeded half the usual lifespan of captive Common Chimpanzees which survive to adulthood.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  • Carroll, Robert Todd (2005): The Skeptic's Dictionary: Bigfoot [a.k.a. Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas, Mapinguari (the Amazon), Sasquatch, Yowie (Australia) and Yeti (Asia)]. Version of 10/07/06. Retrieved 2006-DEC-14.
  • Ely, John J.; Leland, M.; Martino, M.; Swett, W. & Moore, C. M. (1998) Technical report: chromosomal and mtDNA analysis of Oliver. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 105(3): 395-403. DOI: 10.1002/(SICI)1096-8644(199803)105:3<395::AID-AJPA8>3.0.CO;2-Q HTML abstract
  • Hill, W. C. Osman (1969): The nomenclature, taxonomy and distribution of chimpanzees. In: Bourne, G. H. (ed.): The Chimpanzee Vol. 1: 22–49. Karger, Basel/New York.
  • Jolly, Clifford C. (1976): Report on the primate known as Oliver. Unpublished manuscript, 11 January 1976.

[edit] External links

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