Oliver the chimpanzee

Oliver is a chimpanzee (often called a Humanzee) who was once promoted as a missing link due to his bipedal walk. Oliver was acquired as a baby in the early 1970s by trainers Frank and Janet Burger. Oliver possesses a flatter face than his fellow chimpanzees as his teeth were removed. Oliver walks upright and never knucklewalks like his chimpanzee peers. That Oliver prefers to sexually display to human females over chimpanzee females seems to be an urban legend and a legacy from when he was on The Ed Sullivan Show in the early 1970s, who said "Oliver was sold when he began to express sexual interest in his female owner and other women." [1] (http://www.chron.com/content/chronicle/metropolitan/97/01/12/oliver.2-0.html). It appears likelier that he was not the clownish performer his chimp peers were, and that their other chimps avoided Oliver. One odd claim was 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] (http://skepdic.com/bigfoot.html)

Vincent Pace, a concert pianist and friend of the Burgers, tried to purchase Oliver but was outbid. It was Vincent who located Oliver at Buckshire Corporation some 20 years later.

His Japanese tour

His next owner was New York Lawyer Michael Miller who promoted Oliver as a missing link. Oliver appeared on Japanese TV with fraudulent promotions picturing him as a miniature yet hairy human being. 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 pseudo-rock group The Monkees and he was presented on Japanese television shows with Mickey Dolenz spouting bad scientific observations.

Miller claimed he was promised genuine scientific examination of Oliver included genetic testing by the Japanese promoters. He did undergo a battery of tests. Some Japanese results were a claim that Oliver had 47 chromosomes (offering they were erroneous readings). Some anthropologists observing the size of his head, his nose, his ears, and his preference for bipedal walking asserted the possibility that the chimp was a hybrid.

Oliver disappears

Miller sold him to Ralph Helfer, partner in a Californian theme park called Enchanted 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 until it closed down in 1982. 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 had problems with Oliver in that he would not get along with the other chimps.

The Buckshire Corporation purchased Oliver in 1989, a Pennsylvanian laboratory leasing out animals for scientific and cosmetic testing. His entrance examination detailed 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 his muscles becoming atrophied so much that his limbs trembled. In 1995, Sharon Hursh president of the Buckshire Corporation to ask if Primarily Primates (http://www.primarilyprimates.org/) could start a retirement effort for a colony of 12 chimpanzees. The Buckshire Corporation is a Pennsylvania based research facility that is trying to eliminate chimpanzees altogether from their facility. Originally, the 12 chimpanzees were offered to another animal organization that refused to accept the apes or provide any assistance towards their retirement.

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.

A normal chimp

Swett asked Chicago University geneticist Dr. David Ledbetter to examine Oliver's chromosomes, which he did in late 1996. Studies revealed that Oliver had 48, not 47, 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 Texas University's Health Science Center conducted more extensive studies with Oliver, published their results in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology in 1998.

Standard chromosomal studies fully supported Ledbetter's findings that Oliver had the diploid chromesome count expected for chimpanzees. His chromosomes possessed banding patterns typical for the common chimpanzee but different from those of humans and bonobos, thereby excluding any possibility of Oliver being a hybrid. Oliver's mitochondrial DNA sequence corresponded very closely indeed 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. As for Oliver's cranial morphology, ear shape, freckles and baldness, these were nothing more than individual variations, well within the range of variability exhibited by the common chimpanzee.

External links

• 1 Houston Chronicle Article (http://www.chron.com/content/chronicle/metropolitan/97/01/12/oliver.2-0.html)
• 2 The Skeptic's Dictionary: Bigfoot (http://skepdic.com/bigfoot.html)
• DNA test (http://www.n2.net/prey/bigfoot/creatures/dna.htm)
• wisc.edu Oliver article (http://pin.primate.wisc.edu/aboutp/myths/oliver.html)
• texnews.com Oliver article (http://www.texnews.com/news/chimp012697.html)
• Lab Chimps (http://www.seec.net/prisoners.htm) - negative view article
• Primarily Primates (http://www.primarilyprimates.org/buckshire.cfm) - positive view article
• ufl.edu Skeptical inquiry (http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/daegling/research/skeptical.html)
• Skeptic (http://www.rfthomas.clara.net/papers/cripplefoot.html)
• Oliver article (http://www.n2.net/prey/bigfoot/creatures/article.htm)
• Shreeve, James, "Oliver's Travels," Atlantic Monthly, October 2003 (http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2003/10/shreeve.htm)

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