U.S. lab chimps were dumped on Liberia's Monkey Island and left to starve. He saved them.
MONKEY ISLAND, Liberia — All was quiet when the motorboat puttered to a stop. Saltwater lapped at the narrow sandy shore. Mangrove leaves fluttered in the breeze. Then the man in a blue life jacket cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted: Hoo hoo!
Like a secret password, the call unlocked a hidden primate universe. Dozens of chimpanzees emerged from the brush, hairy arms extended. They waded up to the rusty vessel with the nonchalance of someone fetching the mail.
“Time to eat,” said Joseph Thomas, their wiry guardian of 40 years, tossing bananas into the furry crowd.
Chimps aren’t supposed to be stuck on their own island — especially one with no food — or mingle with much-weaker humans. But nothing about Liberia’s Monkey Island is normal. It’s a spectacle, an increasingly costly burden and the enduring legacy of American scientists who set out to cure hepatitis B in 1974.
This colony of 66 chimpanzees, which never learned to survive in the wild, eats roughly 500 pounds of produce each day, plus a weekly batch of hard-boiled eggs for protein. They rely on money from a charity abroad and the devotion of men who’ve known them since they lived in steel cages.
The New York researchers who once injected her with viruses quit the country during the deadliest Ebola outbreak in history, abandoning Mabel and other animals who can live half a century.
Thomas hadn’t planned to devote his life to protecting chimps through epidemic and civil war. Risk hangs over interactions with the brawny animals, who might still carry disease. The caretaker trusts they won’t hurt him because they know him.
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For the past 40 years, Joseph Thomas has been caring for chimpanzees that were infected with hepatitis on Monkey Island, Liberia. (Danielle Paquette/The Washington Post)
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Chimpanzees that live on Monkey Island wade into the water to catch food thrown to them by a team of caretakers. (Danielle Paquette/The Washington Post)
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