A 42-year-old chimpanzee who is toilet-trained and can eat with a knife and fork is believed to be at large in a Southern California forest after escaping his cage.

St. James Davis brought Moe home from Tanzania in 1967 after the baby primate lost his mother to poachers. He and his wife treated Moe as their surrogate son, toilet-training him, teaching him to eat with a knife and fork and letting him sleep in their bed and watch TV.

Over the Davises' protests, Moe was taken to an animal sanctuary. But in 2005, when they took a cake to celebrate Moe's birthday with him, the couple was viciously attacked by two other chimpanzees who had escaped their cages.

Chimps are just like humans: some are more aggressive and hostile than others, but what immediately strikes me about this story is how stupid it is to want to domesticate a chimp into watching TV and living like a human individual. Why do we have to turn everything into circus play? I'm sure this couple didn't mean anything bad, but the whole idea of us turning animals into entertainment is sick, especially when considering that many of these animals are going extinct because of our activities. What they need is free space and the ability to live according to their nature and environment, not to live inside cages to serve to our petty entertainment needs.