When Rick Swope saw that a life was in danger, he didn’t hesitate to put his own life on the line to help. But it wasn’t a human life, it was the life of a chimpanzee.
He was spending a day at the Detroit Zoo watching two chimps chase each other around when one of them slipped and fell into a moat that surrounded the animal exhibit.
The chimp looked helpless, and he was. According to Dr. Linda Brent who runs a chimpanzee sanctuary, they can’t swim. While humans have fat on their bodies that help us to float in water, chimps don’t really have fat on their bodies so they often drown in water.
“This chimp had his hands up and his head was sticking out of the water,” Swope told the Chicago Tribune in 1990. “He was looking at the crowd. It was like he wanted someone to rescue him.”
Brent says that chimps are extremely dangerous, territorial and seven times stronger than humans.
This is why the zoo’s staff refused to jump in and help the drowning chimp.
However, Swope knew that no one else was going to step up to the plate so the husband and father of three flung himself into the 6-ft. deep waters to save the chimp named Jojo.
“Oh, my God I can’t believe that man did that,” yelled someone at the scene of the rescue.
The water was dark and dirty, so he couldn’t see where he was swimming and had to rely on the others in the zoo to tell him which direction to go in.
Following their lead, he swam to the bottom of the moat and felt around for Jojo. He finally grabbed him and pulled the chimp onto the shore.
“He was pretty lifeless, but you could see he was still alive,” Swope told the Chicago Tribune. “He was looking at me. I think he knew what was going on.”
He wasn’t sure what to do and felt it was too dangerous to give the chimp mouth to mouth.
“Then I looked up and saw there was another one coming down the hill with his teeth bared,” Swope recalls. “I didn’t know if he was going after the other monkey or after me, but I got the hell out of there.”
Jojo’s entire rescue was caught on tape. You can watch it below.
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