Woman recalls the moment she watched herself being ‘eaten alive’ by chimpanzee
Warning: This article contains content some readers may find distressing
A woman recalled the horrifying moment she was being 'eaten alive' by a chimpanzee following an unprovoked and brutal attack.
Angelique Todd was working as a volunteer zoo keeper in Port Lympne Zoo Park near Folkestone, UK back in 1994.
During her time working as a volunteer, Todd struck up 'quite a good' relationship with a 33-year-old male chimp named Bustah.
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But that relationship certainly took an unexpected turn when one day, Bustah grabbed Todd's coat and pulled her arm into the cage while she was feeding the three chimps.
Speaking to Our World back in 2004, Todd said: "Male chimpanzees in captivity in general, you have to be careful with them, they are one of the most dangerous animals in the zoo. They can be very aggressive, very feisty so you always are cautious."
While they may have garnered a good relationship, Bustah was apparently in a 'dangerous' mood the day he attacked the zookeeper.
"He saw his opportunity and he took it... these kinds of events, you go in slow motion, you're in shock, you're trying to survive," Todd added.
As the chimpanzee grabbed the zookeeper's coat, Todd thought she could just take her coat off and she'd be fine.
But as she tried to pull her arm back, the zookeeper realized the strength of the animal was just too strong for her.
"I couldn't provide any resistance, he was just so strong. It was pure survival," she said adding that she was basically 'watching [herself] being eaten alive'.
The chimpanzee bit off Todd's thumb and index finger and severed her arteries, which caused her to lose a 'huge amount of muscle mass'.
"I still have tooth wounds on either side of my arm but this is much, much improved," she added.
Despite her horrific injuries, Todd does not hold any bad will towards the animal, saying that she believes Bustah got 'over-excited' to see her.
She continued: "I think what he wanted to do was just get hold of me. I think initially, it was just 'I can get hold of her, I can see a hole, there's a way that I can grab her' and that's what his initial reaction was.
"After he bit my thumb off, obviously the blood started spurting out, then it became kind of like a feeding frenzy."
Despite her bad experience with animals, Todd ended up pursuing a career as a biologist and researcher.
She studied to become a biologist and swapped Kent for the African jungle to become a researcher for the World Wide Fund For Nature.
She then spent the next decade living and ‘learning to speak’ the language of gorillas, adopting the moniker 'The Gorilla Whisperer' and featuring in the nature documentary My Gorilla Family.
Callum Jones