Santino is a male chimpanzee

Chimpanzee

Chimpanzee, sometimes colloquially chimp, is the common name for the two extant species of ape in the genus Pan. The Congo River forms the boundary between the native habitat of the two species:...

 held at Furuvik

Furuvik

Furuvik is a locality situated in Gävle Municipality, Gävleborg County, Sweden with 486 inhabitants in 2005.-Furuvik Zoo:Furuvik Zoo is an amusement park and zoo in Furuvik. It attracted a degree of international attention when it was reported in March 2009 that a chimpanzee residing there had...

 zoo in Sweden

Sweden

Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

. In March 2009 it was reported that Santino had planned hundreds of stone-throwing attacks on visitors to the zoo.

Biography

Zookeepers noticed, after observing Santino behind blind glass, that the chimp had been busy stockpiling ammunition in anticipation of the visitors, dragging stones from a protective moat and even thumping chunks of concrete into rough discs. He made the piles of stones only on the part of his island facing the crowds and his behaviour shows that forward planning isn't a uniquely human trait.

To control his behavior and keep his hormone levels down, zookeepers have castrated Santino. Since then, Santino has been observed to play more and is getting "fatter".

Media coverage

On the 19th of March 2009, Santino and his attacks were mentioned as a part of "when animals attack our morals", on The Colbert Report.